ABSTRACT
Scenes of demonstrations, protests, and rallies frequently appear in newspapers and social media sites, claim prizes in photography competitions, and hang on art gallery walls.1 In emergent mediascapes, images that assert dissent and resistance to systemic oppression are increasingly popular.2 In 2011, a year of political upheaval that ranks alongside 1968 or 1989, “The Protester” became Time Magazine’s person of the year.3 Western viewers are inundated with “protest photographs,” ranging from the coverage of street demonstrations to “selfie rallies” conducted on social media websites in solidarity with various economic, political, and social issues (see for example Michelle Obama’s tweet of herself holding a sign bearing the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls in reference to atrocities committed by the Boko Haram group in Nigeria). From Allan Sekula’s historic photoseries Waiting for Tear Gas, documenting the anticipation of violence between police and demonstrators in Seattle at the 1999 World Trade Organization summit, to contemporary images from other sites of protest at Zucotti Park, the occupied West Bank, Syntagma Square, Ferguson, Gezi Park; from the Arab Spring and the Greek Uprising to the global Black Lives Matter protests-these images not only offer memorable coverage of social injustice and state oppression, they also open up conceptual, discursive, and affective space claiming our responsiveness.
