Table Of ContentPHOTOGRAPHY AND MIGRATION
Written in the context of unprecedented dislocation and a global refugee crisis,
this edited volume thinks through photography’s long and complex relationship
to human migration.
While contemporary media images largely frame migration in terms of trauma,
victimhood, and pity, so much more can be said of photography’s role in the movement
of people around the world. Cameras can document, enable, or control human
movement across geographical, cultural, and political divides. Their operators put
faces on forced and voluntary migrations, making visible hardships and suffering
as well as opportunity and optimism. Photographers include migrating subjects
who take pictures for their own consumption, not for international recognition.
And photographs themselves migrate with their makers, subjects, and viewers, as
the very concept of photography takes on new functions and meanings.
Photography and Migration places into conversation media images and other
photographs that the contributors have witnessed, collected, or created through their
diverse national, regional, and local contexts. Developed across thirteen chapters,
this conversation encompasses images, histories, and testimonies offering analysis
of new perspectives on photography and migration today.
Tanya Sheehan is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Associate Professor of Art at Colby
College, USA, where she founded the Photography and Migration Project in 2014.
She has authored two books, Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-
Century America (2011) and S tudy in Black and White: Photography, Race, Humor
(2018). She has also edited several collections of essays, including Photography,
History, Difference (2014), P hotography and Its Origins (2015, with Andres Zervigon),
and Grove Art Guide to Photography (2017). Since 2015, Sheehan has served as editor
of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art Journal .
PHOTOGRAPHY AND
MIGRATION
Edited by Tanya Sheehan
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Tanya Sheehan; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Tanya Sheehan to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
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permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sheehan, Tanya, 1976– editor.
Title: Photography and migration / edited by Tanya Sheehan.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001332 | ISBN 9781138244399 (hardback :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138244405 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315276953 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Documentary photography. | Photography—
Social aspects. | Immigrants—Pictorial works. | Emigration and
immigration.
Classification: LCC TR820.5 .P487 2018 | DDC 770—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001332
ISBN: 978-1-138-24439-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-24440-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-27695-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of maps vii
List of illustrations viii
About the contributors xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
1 Photography and migration: keywords 1
Tanya Sheehan
PART I
(Im)mobility 23
2 Back to America: photography and Japanese Americans
from incarceration to resettlement 27
Jasmine Alinder
3 Residential school photographs: the visual rhetoric of
Indigenous removal and containment 45
Carol Williams
4 Animating death: stills that migrate 63
Anne Teresa Demo
vi Contents
PART II
Border 79
5 The razor’s edge: image and corpo-reality at Europe’s borders 83
Parvati Nair
6 Fantasy islands: photography, empathy, and Australia’s
detention archipelago 100
Jane Lydon
7 The indecisive moment: photoethnography on the
undocumented migration trail 115
Jason De León
PART III
Refugee 131
8 Refugee photography and the subject of human interest 135
Thy Phu
9 Feelings, Facebook, forced migration: photographs
of refugees and affective spaces online 150
Marta Zarzycka
10 The visual politics of climate refugees 162
T. J. Demos
PART IV
Diaspora 177
11 Photography and diaspora: a roundtable 181
Anthony W. Lee with Pok Chi Lau, Surendra Lawoti, and
Wei Leng Tay
12 Intimacy out of doors: landscape, labor, and Chinese
diasporic practices of looking 199
Nadine Attewell
13 Kan Azuma and the Japanese Canadian diaspora:
perception, identity, and their erosion 216
Martha Langford
Index 233
MAPS
The following maps were created by Hannah Springhorn using ArcGIS® soft-
ware, release 10.4, by Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), Redlands,
CA, 2017. ArcGIS® and ArcMap™ are the intellectual property of Esri and are
used herein under license. Copyright © Esri.
1 Major sites in chapters 2– 4 . 24
2 Major sites in chapters 5– 7 . 80
3 Major sites in chapters 8– 10. 132
4 Major sites in chapters 11– 1 3 . 178
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.1 Nilufer Demir/Reuters, Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi found
dead on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, September 2, 2015. 2
1.2 Lewis W. Hine, Climbing Into America, Ellis Island , 1908,
probably printed in 1930, gelatin silver print. 5
1.3 Emily Jacir, Where We Come From , 2001–3, detail (Munir),
American passport, 30 texts, 32 C-prints, and 1 video.
Text (Munir): 9 1/2 × 11 1/2 in. Photo (Munir):
15 × 20 in. Photo: Bill Orcutt. 6
1.4 Pablo López Luz, San Diego–Tijuana IX, Frontera USA–Mexico ,
2015, inkjet print. 8
1.5 Andreas Rutkauskas, Telephone Reporting Booth, Angle Inlet,
Minnesota , 2014, color photograph. 9
1.6 Christinne Muschi/Reuters, a Sudanese family is taken into
custody by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in
Hemmingford, Québec, after crossing into Canada on
February 12, 2017. 10
1.7 Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times/Redux Pictures,
Turkish boat of refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos,
November 16, 2015. 12
1.8 Gedeon Florien Picher, portrait of an unidentified woman,
ca. 1890, albumen print mounted on cabinet card. 15
1.9 J. R. Cote, girls dressed as angels at the Notre Dame School,
Waterville, Maine, ca. 1930s, gelatin silver print. 16
2.1 Caleb Foote, cover of Outcasts! with photograph by
Tom Parker, 1944. 29
Illustrations ix
2.2 Francis Stewart, S ixth Grade Boys Enjoy a Game of Softball at
Recess Time , February 10, 1943, Manzanar, California, gelatin
silver print. 31
2.3 Ansel Adams, B aseball Game, Manzanar Relocation Center,
California , 1943, gelatin silver print. 32
2.4 Caleb Foote, cover of American Refugees , with photograph
by Dorothea Lange, 1942. 33
2.5 Unknown photographer, photograph in the War Relocation
Authority pamphlet, Relocation of Japanese Americans , May 1943. 35
2.6 Unknown photographer, two-page spread in War Relocation
Authority pamphlet, New Homes for the Issei , February 1945. 38
3.1 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Bedtime
at the Navajo Indian Mission, Farmington , NM (H29296),
ca. 1900–30, gelatin silver print mounted on paper. 50
3.2 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
Industrial Training (H13323), ca. 1900–30, gelatin silver
print mounted on paper. 52
3.3 Atterton Studio (Cardston, Alberta, Canada), I n Cooking
Class, Sisters and Blood Girls at St. Mary’s Residential School,
Blood Reserve, Southern Alberta, Canada (NC-7-750),
July 1946. 53
3.4 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
New Arrivals at the Theo. Roosevelt School for Indians, Fort Apache,
Arizonia [sic] (H35519), ca. 1900–30, gelatin silver print
mounted on paper. 57
3.5 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
New Students After First Clean Up. Theo. Roosevelt School
for Indians, Fort Apache, Arizonia [sic] (H35520), ca. 1900–30,
gelatin silver print mounted on paper. 57
3.6 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
Students After Second Year in School. Theo. Roosevelt School
for Indians, Fort Apache, Ariz . (H35521), ca. 1900–30, gelatin
silver print mounted on paper. 58
3.7 Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, page
from an album related to ministries among Native Americans,
ca. 1910–30s, gelatin silver prints mounted on paper. 58
4.1 Yolanda Gonzalez-Garcia , Death on a Friendly Border , DVD,
directed by Rachel Antell, US/Mexico: 2001, screenshot. 70
4.2 Fransisco Hernandez, The Undocumented , DVD, directed by
Marco Williams, US/Mexico: 2013, screenshot. 73
4.3 Fransisco Hernandez, The Undocumented , DVD, directed by
Marco Williams, US/Mexico: 2013, screenshot. 73
