Decolonisation is now: photography and student-social movements in South Africa. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Thomas, Kylie
• Is Part Of: Visual studies. Volume 33:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 98
• Page End: 110
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Visual perception -- Periodicals; Visual anthropology -- Periodicals; Visual sociology -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2018.1426251
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-586X

Abstract

Abstract : The 2015–2016 student protest movements to decolonise universities and to bring about free education in South Africa have been accompanied by striking images that capture the Zeitgeist of the post-apartheid state. This paper focuses on photographs taken by students who also took part in the protests and argues that a new iconography has emerged that references the past but that also breaks away from the social documentary forms of representation that characterised the struggle against apartheid. I explore how the resurgence of black consciousness is made manifest in visual images and argue for reading photographs by student-protestor-photographers as tangible signs of the emerging 'woke' subjectivities of young black people in South Africa today.