Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction: Our Family Tales and Photographic Records  1

Part 1. Family Matters: Sight, Sense, Touch  21

1. Family Touches  35

Interstitial 1. The Girl and/in the Gaze  71

2. Orphan Photos, Fugitive Images  83

Part 2. Image Matters: Sight, Sound, Score  115

Interstitial 2. "Thingyness"; or, The Matter of the Image  117

3. The Lyric of the Archive  129

Epilogue  199

Notes  205

Bibliography  223

Illustration Credits  231

Index  233

“Image Matters is an extraordinary reflection on what vernacular photography enabled black Europeans to say about themselves and their communities. . . . I have family photos throughout my home, but after reading Image Matters, this thought provoking book, I will never look at them the same. They now seem to take on a life of their own beyond just images. This is a book that I highly recommend, especially from a scholarly perspective.”—Dennis Moore, EUR/Electronic Urban Report

“Campt offers a compelling study of how ‘engaging the photograph as a dynamic and contested site of black cultural formation’ and belonging leads to insights about representation extending well beyond substantive particularities. In prose readily accessible to undergraduates, she adapts current theories concerning the intentionality of photography, "image-making as a collective and relational practice of enunciation," and "haptic visualities" to case studies of black German and British identity formation.... Recommended.” —A.F. Roberts, CHOICE Magazine

“Image Matters is a valuable addition to the body of knowledge on diaspora
and transnationalism. The work also provides significance to the field of visual rhetoric and may prove indispensable to other similar studies. Furthermore, given the nature of the images and the stellar research this work can be effectively incorporated into the realm of psychology and sociology. At the very least, Campt upholds the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words and effectively challenges us to seek a deeper meaning of the photographs we view.”—Mary Vanderlinden, Ethnic and Racial Studies

“[A] beautifully produced work. . . . Campt asks thoughtful questions about photographs and, thus, provides us with a master class in thinking about images and how to write about them.”—Brett A. Berliner, History: Reviews of New Books

“Campt, by merely presenting unseen images of these African people, accomplishes much. She also proves that the African Diaspora that we all know from history books and discussion isn't as streamlined as we thought. Image Matters presents a complex story on race, gender and image control of a people who haven't controlled their image in a long time.”—Stephon Johnson, New York Amsterdam News

“In Image Matters Tina Campt explores a visual nexus of black European subjectivities through an innovative interrogation of vernacular photography. This volume is a beautifully detailed account of Campt’s investigation, one that gracefully unfolds its unexpectedly private moments, moving public provocations, and at times chilling accounts of our perpetually returning historical legacies. Campt has gathered a stunning array of photographs. . . .”—Vera Ingrid Grant, CAA Reviews

“Image Matters is an extraordinary reflection on what vernacular photography enabled black Europeans to say about themselves and their communities. . . . I have family photos throughout my home, but after reading Image Matters, this thought provoking book, I will never look at them the same. They now seem to take on a life of their own beyond just images. This is a book that I highly recommend, especially from a scholarly perspective.”—Dennis Moore, EUR/Electronic Urban Report

“Campt offers a compelling study of how ‘engaging the photograph as a dynamic and contested site of black cultural formation’ and belonging leads to insights about representation extending well beyond substantive particularities. In prose readily accessible to undergraduates, she adapts current theories concerning the intentionality of photography, "image-making as a collective and relational practice of enunciation," and "haptic visualities" to case studies of black German and British identity formation.... Recommended.” —A.F. Roberts, CHOICE Magazine

“Image Matters is a valuable addition to the body of knowledge on diaspora
and transnationalism. The work also provides significance to the field of visual rhetoric and may prove indispensable to other similar studies. Furthermore, given the nature of the images and the stellar research this work can be effectively incorporated into the realm of psychology and sociology. At the very least, Campt upholds the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words and effectively challenges us to seek a deeper meaning of the photographs we view.”—Mary Vanderlinden, Ethnic and Racial Studies

“[A] beautifully produced work. . . . Campt asks thoughtful questions about photographs and, thus, provides us with a master class in thinking about images and how to write about them.”—Brett A. Berliner, History: Reviews of New Books

“Campt, by merely presenting unseen images of these African people, accomplishes much. She also proves that the African Diaspora that we all know from history books and discussion isn't as streamlined as we thought. Image Matters presents a complex story on race, gender and image control of a people who haven't controlled their image in a long time.”—Stephon Johnson, New York Amsterdam News

“In Image Matters Tina Campt explores a visual nexus of black European subjectivities through an innovative interrogation of vernacular photography. This volume is a beautifully detailed account of Campt’s investigation, one that gracefully unfolds its unexpectedly private moments, moving public provocations, and at times chilling accounts of our perpetually returning historical legacies. Campt has gathered a stunning array of photographs. . . .”—Vera Ingrid Grant, CAA Reviews

"In this lucid and meticulously argued book, Tina M. Campt questions the way we see and understand race by examining family photographs of black Europeans. Her detailed readings of studio portraits, snapshots, and orphaned images engage the multiple sensory registers on which images solicit and touch us. In our encounters with these photographs of belonging, displacement, and exclusion, we are reminded why images matter."—Saidiya Hartman, author of Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route

"None of the riveting photographs in Image Matters are what they first seem. As Tina M. Campt's analysis unfolds, the images of black diasporic communities in Europe are revealed to be infinitely complex. They complicate accepted narratives and link to larger questions about the nature of historical evidence and the historical process. Ultimately, they become a prism for thinking about the diasporic condition itself, drawing attention to the diversity of black experience and to the ways that diaspora involves not only movement but also staying put."—Elizabeth Edwards, author of The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918

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