2-Class Module
Suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in: Photography • Visual Studies • Media Studies • Art History • Journalism • Social Justice • Documentary Studies • Graphic Design.
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Download PDF Visuals – Deck for 2-Class Module
Module Overview
This two-class module uses Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present as the primary text to examine how photography in print has served as both a tool and a document of protest and resistance worldwide. The module is designed to help students develop a critical vocabulary for analyzing the relationship between print format, visual aesthetics, and political action.
Flashpoint! is a 576-page anthology surveying more than 245 examples of photography in print—photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals, and alternative newspapers—from over twenty countries. Edited by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich and published by 10×10 Photobooks, the book is organized thematically into seven chapters: Anti, Gender, Displacement, Race & Class, Environment, Political, and War & Violence. Each chapter contains multiple sub-themes addressing specific movements and moments of resistance, from the Anpo protests in 1960s Japan to anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, from AIDS activism in the United States to environmental resistance globally. Eight commissioned essays by scholars including Arthur Fournier, Marc Feustel, Mark Sealy, Makeda Best, Kerry Manders, Hannah Darabi, Elisa Medde, and Pauline Vermare provide critical frameworks for engaging with the material.
The book’s central inquiry—Is protest photography in print a “tool conceived through an aesthetic of urgency” or “an elegantly designed photobook, published a year or more later”?—provides the organizing question for this module. Across two classes, students will examine how the materiality, design, and distribution context of a photographic publication shapes its political meaning and efficacy.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze how different print formats—photobooks, magazines, zines, posters, pamphlets, and newspapers—shape the reception, circulation, and political impact of protest photography.
- Distinguish between an “aesthetic of urgency” (print as TOOL deployed during events) and retrospective documentation (print as designed RECORD after events), and evaluate how each mode functions within resistance movements.
- Examine Flashpoint!’s thematic structure as an act of canon formation, considering what editorial choices reveal about how protest photography is historicized and repeats itself.
- Compare protest photography in print across different geographical, political, and historical contexts, identifying both shared visual strategies and locally specific approaches to resistance.
- Develop critical vocabulary for discussing the materiality of photographic publications—paper, typography, binding, image quality, layout—and their relationship to political content.
Required Text
Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present, ed. Russet Lederman & Olga Yatskevich (New York: 10×10 Photobooks, 2024). 576 pp., 760 images. Softcover with dust jacket. ISBN: 979-8-218-45950-5. Shortlisted for the 2024 Paris Photo–Aperture Photobook Catalogue of the Year Award. Available from 10x10photobooks.org. $85.
Class 1:
Tool or Document? The Aesthetics of Urgency in Protest Photography
| Duration | 75–90 minutes |
| Assigned Reading | Arthur Fournier’s introductory essay on the democratization of print technology and the “aesthetic of urgency” Marc Feustel’s essay on Japanese protest photography of the 1960s–70s Chapters: “Anti” (complete) and “Race & Class” (complete). |
| Key Themes | Tool vs. document; the aesthetic of urgency; format as political meaning; the democratization of print; materiality and protest. |
Class 2:
Canon, Curation, and the Afterlife of Protest Images
| Duration | 75–90 minutes |
| Assigned Reading | Mark Sealy’s essay (excerpted in The Nation) Kerry Manders’s essay on AIDS in visual culture Chapters: “Gender” (complete), plus one additional chapter of student’s choice from Environment, Displacement, Political, or War & Violence |
| Key Themes | The anthology as canon formation; the afterlife and re-contextualization of protest images; editorial voice and political neutrality; the body and photography in gender-based protest; photography’s capacity to sustain or exhaust political attention |