Krista Thompson

This project examines the constitutive role of photography and televisual media in the formation of contemporary African diasporic communities, concentrating on Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the United States. The circulation of visual technologies has informed new approaches to representation and visuality, conceptions of value , and modes of contemporary art practice. Many people who participate in these forms emphasize the process of being photographed rather than the physical production of an image. Further they express an interest in being in the light generated by the camera. These uses of photography bring into view local struggles for visibility in postcolonial African diasporic societies. They also evince how black subjects redirect and materially reconstitute globally-distributed forms of visual media and technologies even as they are transformed by them.