28 February 2025: The Grolier Club hosted a panel discussion salon with Arthur Fournier, Kris Graves and Kyle Canter.
10×10 Photobooks held a panel discussion with archives specialist Arthur Fournier, photographer Kris Graves and scholar Kyle Canter on the relationship of photography with text in protest materials in print. Featuring examples from 10×10 Photobooks’ new anthology, Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present (10×10 Photobooks), the speakers will explore the recent history of protest photography in print worldwide and how the intersection of photography and text shape both the making and reception of the material—from photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals and alternative newspapers. Since its inception, photography has captured defining historical moments, serving as either a tool or a document of protest—or both. Often combined with text (essays, poetry, diary entries, etc.) to tell stories or make arguments, photography has served this purpose through extreme social and cultural transformations and the contemporary daily reality of political and social upheaval, often contentious, disorienting and polarizing.
Arthur Fournier is an independent broker of twentieth-century archives and a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America who focuses on primary source materials from the late twentieth century, including underground serials, self-published books and ephemera that provide an alternative bibliographic view of contemporary life and revolutionary struggle.
Kris Graves is an American photographer who examines systemic unfairness in the United States. Using a mix of conceptual and documentary practices, Graves photographs the subtleties of societal power and how racism and capitalism can be seen and experienced in everyday life. His recent publications include RNC DNC, Privileged Mediocrity and A Bleak Reality.
Kyle Canter is a PhD student in art history at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include the concept and politics of social documentary photography and photography’s relationship to the medical humanities and gender/sexuality studies. His writing has appeared in 125th Street: Photography in Harlem, the Journal of Black Mountain College Studies and Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present.
Video recording of salon #77 forthcoming on 10×10 Photobooks’ YouTube channel.
A big thank you to Eve Kahn, Declan Kiely, April Rose, Ilir Pervizi and Dionis Afric of The Grolier Club for hosting and facilitating this salon. Thank you to Shea Baasch for photos and Jeff Gutterman for video recording.
Salon photo by Shea Baasch and Jeff Gutterman.