Photographer and St. Louis native Adrian O. Walker came to campus as the featured artist in the panel discussion, Photography as a Medium of Change: Practice, Politics, and History, in late April, 2015. While on campus Mr. Walker kindly agreed to an interview with Matthew Fox-Amato, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry Program, on chronicling the Ferguson protests as a citizen artist, the beauty of urban decay when examined and inscripted by the artists of graffiti and photography, and his imperative that his camera is "a tool, not a weapon."
Recorded on April 24, 2015.
About the panel discussion:
Photography as a Medium of Change: Practice, Politics, and History (April 23, 2015, DUC 276)
What are the politics of representing the black subject and the black community in photography? What moral obligations do photographers confront when photographing civil rights struggles--to the community? to presenting multiple viewpoints? to creating an archive for the local community, in its effort to know and preserve its stories for future generations?
Who are the imagined audiences for civil rights photography? what are the politics of the photographer's physical presence--inserting her/his body into the scene of struggle? coming into the community invited or uninvited? how do photographs engage with and potentially transform public discourse in the age of social media?
Should the photographer aspire to create an "iconic image," of the sort that so powerfully shapes understandings of the mid-20th-century civil rights movement?
The panel is one in an ongoing series of AMCS "Master Classes" which invites and creates conversations about the politics of practicing, theorizing and historicizing art forms. The goal is to create a platform upon which practitioners, historians, theoreticians, researchers and teachers can, from their different perspectives, discuss the politics of such media.
Featured Panelists:
Matthew Fox-Amato, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Washington University
Angela Miller, Professor, Art History and Archeology, Washington University
Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor, African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Adrian O. Walker, Photographer
Co-Sponsored By Law, Identity, and Culture Initiative, WUSTL School of Law. See Related Law, Identity, and Culture
Event: (Un)Civil Mediations: A Civil Rights and Visual Culture Symposium, April 23-25.
