Photographs made under violence keep transmitting that violence indefinitely

Evidence

Azoulay focuses on this point in her brief. While Sarrouf acknowledged the “horrific circumstances” under which Renty and Delia were photographed, and “the continuing impact of slavery in the United States,” he still concluded that “the law, as it currently stands, does not confer a property interest to the subject of a photograph regardless of how objectionable the photograph’s origin may be.” Azoulay sums up why this interpretation of the law needs to be revisited: “Photographs taken under circumstances of violence are not reducible to what is recorded in them, since the violence that enable their creation does not disappear after the camera’s shutter clicks. Photographs taken to support violent regimes or acts retain the original violence in the image; they continue to sustain the original act of violence well after the image was produced.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1219

Categorization

• XREF: Azoulay’s claim that images made under violence continue sustaining the original act echoes the reader’s theme of institutional holding of stolen things — the image functions as a continuing transfer of violence.
• SEED: An essay on how archival objects can be ‘active’ rather than inert — that violence persists in the object and keeps landing on descendants, as a critique of neutral-archive ideology.