Case #33 I, from the series Archival Impulse,

2013

<p>Jackson appropriates the visual strategies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century racist photographs made in the name of scientific ethnography. Such photographs were often taken by white photographers from Europe, ostensibly to document different body types of Black and Indigenous people as part of the long history of colonization. In <em>Case #33</em> I, part of her <em>Archival Impulse</em> series, Jackson turns the camera on herself, showing her nude bust in profile against a soft taupe background. Adorned with nothing but cowrie shells and beads, she gazes into the distance without acknowledging the photographer or the viewer. However, Jackson also subverts the colonial gaze by placing herself behind the lens. This role-switching calls attention to the hierarchical power dynamics bound up in nineteenth-century colonial and photographic practices and bestows agency on the historically anonymous subjects of these images. </p>

<p><strong>Student label, AAS 349 / ART 364, Seeing to Remember: Representing Slavery Across the Black Atlantic, Spring 2017:</strong> </p> <p><em>Case #33 I</em> is part of Jackson’s larger series, <em>Archival Impulse</em>. In this series, the artist critically examines nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography taken for ethnographic purposes—or to document racial differences. Jackson stages her photographs in a way that is reminiscent of the photography of this period, such as works by <a href="#">Bertall</a>. She attempts to reveal colonial photography as a staged performance of scientific objectivity. Here, the subject wears an elaborate necklace and hair ornament, which stand out due to their brilliant blue color in the photograph’s sea of brown. The artist used the color blue to suggest the concept of photography as a theatrical space. </p> <p><strong>Jennifer Bunkley<br>Princeton Class of 2018</strong></p>

<p>Ayana V. Jackson’s series <em>Archival Impulse</em> is named after an idea formulated by Princeton professor of art history Hal Foster: that in looking at and reimagining the archive—or artworks of the past—new ways of looking at a time period can be created. The archive to which Jackson is referring is nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographic photography. This type of photography was used as a means of documenting humanity, but it often ended up emphasizing supposed racial differences. Ethnographic photography often was used to justify the dehumanization of non-white people, particularly black people.</p> <p>Jackson deconstructs and reconfigures how we read ethnographic photography. The subject of the photograph, Jackson herself, is positioned in a way common for the black subjects of this form. She is topless, her facial expression is carefully blank, and the background is deliberately vague. This work is trying to demonstrate that ethnographic photography was deliberately set up to convey messages that gave rise to the dominant white supremacist, racial frameworks of the time. Jackson utilizes scale to emphasize the humanity of the subject as well. In a departure from the small photographs featured in the books and memorabilia in which traditional ethnographic photographs were featured, the sheer size of Jackson's photograph forces the viewer to confront the subject’s humanity.</p> <p><strong>Jennifer Bunkley<br>Princeton Class of 2018<br></strong>(prepared for the course AAS 349 / ART 364, Seeing to Remember: Representing Slavery Across the Black Atlantic, Spring 2017)<br></p>