Photographic returns : racial justice and the time of photography / Shawn Michelle Smith.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Photographic returns -- Looking forward and looking back: Rashid Johnson and Frederick Douglass on photography -- Photographic remains: Sally Mann at Antietam -- The scene of the crime: Deborah Luster -- Photographic referrals: Lorna Simpson's 9 props -- Afterimages: Jason Lazarus -- Photographic reenactments: Carrie Mae Weems's constructing history -- False returns: Taryn Simon's The Innocents -- A glimpse forward: Dawoud Bey's The Birmingham project.

"In PHOTOGRAPHIC RETURNS Shawn Smith sets out to examine works of contemporary art, only to find that many of the works refer back to the past, to photography's many intersections with the history of racial justice in the U.S. Smith focuses on flashpoints in that history -- spanning from the abolitionist movement, to the Civil War, lynching, and mass incarceration-- to mark the roles that photography has played in documenting the exigencies of Black life, and as a tool for resisting those racial regimes. For each of these moments, Smith shows how contemporary photographers utilize their medium as a way to recall, revise, or amplify the relationship between racial politics in the past and in the present. She argues that the tendency of African-American photographers and other artists to return to the archive of early photography does not simply point to the usefulness of early photography as document of the past, but to the recursive nature of photography itself. This study expands our theories of photography and memory by arguing that the recursive temporality of photography is central to its role in recording and remembering history. It also asserts that photography is an invaluable tool for critical practice of racial justice"-- Provided by publisher.