The just-published massive anthology Flashpoint! (576 pages and 760 images) presents a global selection of photographs, photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals, and alternative newspapers and magazines that address protest and resistance from the 1950s to the present. These numerous examples of photography in print cover years of a troubled global history defined by worldwide political and social upheaval.
By placing photobooks next to posters, DIY zines and independent journals, Flashpoint! explores the diverse roles and aesthetics through which photography in print has become a conduit of protest and resistance. In choosing that approach, Flashpoint! poses an important question, leaving it open for us to reflect on: is the imagery of resistance a tool conceived through an aesthetic of urgency, to be used during events as they unfold? But could resistance and protest also take the form of a carefully designed photobook, documenting a past uprising in its pages created by well-known photographers, writers, and designers?
When leafing through Flashpoint!‘s , I found that both approaches are essential. From immediate revolt and rage to reflective commentary published in the aftermath of events, protest photography in print covers a variety of formats, blurring lines between media. These photobooks of are not simply books with photographs: they could take the form, for instance, of a zine, a journal, a poster, a newspaper.
In a departure from traditional formats that sometimes parallels the contemporary field book art, the designers Flashpoint! ’s striking red cover with a graphic rendition of a photograph , the choice of a paper akin to newspaper print, and the sequences of hybrid forms and formats integrating photographs and text , as well as a choice of unadorned typography – in a design by Huber/Sterzinger and Miloš Gavrić– maybe inspired by the Russian avant-garde’s books and Rosta posters – draws the editors’ point home.
Flashpoint is the result of several years of research conducted by the very small team of 10 x 10 editions, a New York based organization and publishing house that focuses on photobooks. Eight essayists (Makeda Best, Hannah Darabi, Arthur Fournier, Marc Feustel, Kerry Manders, Elisa Medde, Mark Sealy, and Pauline Vermare) added their expertise to the anthology, and eleven researchers contributed detailed descriptions of photobooks, fliers, journals, alternative newspapers, posters, and zines, from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, the UK, and the US.
With 245 photography in print, Flashpoint!‘s survey is structured thematically into seven broad chapters: Anti, Gender, Displacement, Race & Class, Environment, Political and War & Violence. Each includes sub-themes that address resistance: anti-government, anti-globalization, women’s rights, AIDS, anti-apartheid, civil rights, anti-imperialism, workers’ rights, territorial disputes, student protests, national populism, anti-colonialism, revolution, and gun violence.
In our troubled, partisan, and violent times of fake news, distorted or even invented images, Flashpoint! is a timely and essential book. This writer hopes that it will be a reference for readers and the beginning of a visual approach, a method of sorts allowing us to reflect on the political forces that shape our times; The hope is that the powerful photo-based examples included in these pages give us as a way of thinking about, and rethinking, our shared future. Assembling such an archive may be one of the only ways to stress photography’s essential role as a document of its times, and reinforce our common memory, without which no future protest and resistance would be possible.
Carole Naggar
Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present
Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich, editors
New York: 10×10 Photobooks
Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich, editors New York: 10×10 Photobooks, 2024 (November)
31 x 24 cm, 576 pages, 760 images Softcover with dust jacket
Edition of 2000
Design: Huber/Sterzinger and Miloš Gavrić
ISBN: 979-8-218-45950-5
https://10x10photobooks.org/flashpoint-book/
