The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization

The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization is a unique study of art photography as a means to understand whiteness. In a time of new fascist and alt-right politics from Donald Trump to Tommy Robinson, this book attempts to locate the “image of whiteness” as a thing both imagined and pictured, so that we can better understand its meaning and construction. In over 60 images, a contextual essay and a number of interviews with artists, historians and philosophers, this book seeks to introduce its reader to some important extracts from the troubling story of whiteness and describe its falsehoods, paradoxes and oppressive nature. At the centre of these pages lies a set of important questions all white people should ask themselves: How was whiteness invented, what does whiteness look like and is it really ever ok to be “White”? This book argues that the invention and continuation of the “white race” is not just a political, social and legal phenomenon, it is also a complexly visual one.