ABSTRACT
In the program for the conference cycle Restitutions. Photography in Debt to Its Past, celebrated in spring of 2022 in Barcelona, curator and photography historian Carles Guerra claims that “restituting, repairing, repatriating, and renaming are part of the new functions of photography, which faces a debt to its past and itself”. Historians have recently observed that images of white suffering were more likely to garner support and receive wide circulation than images of Black families in similar poses and conditions. Sally Stein has recently delivered another chapter of her in-depth research on this image and its author. Azoulay's new “theory of photography” is thus fundamental, in the most literal sense, for the discussions, essays and case studies of the following chapter about diversity, empowerment and social justice, especially her contestation to the “right” of photographers to own their images in a moral, or even legal, sense.
