Freedom-movement photographs mask ongoing harm as heroic nostalgia

Evidence

The danger in these photographs is that they can easily preempt such questions. They can be seen as powerful, beautiful images of a heroic time and of America’s promise, not as traces of what has happened and is happening in this country. But Baldwin keeps turning the pages and sets the stage for a reckoning with the reality of lives shattered amid the lies about progress and the willful ignorance of the carnage left in its wake. The photographs frame his return to the South, and his repetition of the names of “Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin” sounds like a dirge that calls us to the tragedy of the times and the forgetfulness of the after times. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 462

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that iconic photographs ‘preempt’ hard questions connects to debates about how historical imagery flattens ongoing injustice. — connects to: Actual photographs of transformed homeland undermined the optimistic return fantasy — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 952