Contact Zones

The role of photography in U.S. migrant histories
Since the mid-nineteenth century photography has played a central role in cultural encounters within and between migrant communities in the United States. Migrant histories have been mediated through the photographic image, and the cultural practices of photography have themselves been transformed as migrant communities mobilise the photographic image to navigate experiences of cultural dislocation and the forging of new identities. Exploring photographic images and the cultural practices of photography as ‘contact zones’ through which cultural exchange and transformation takes place, this volume addresses the role of photography in migrant histories in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Taking as its focal point photography’s role in shaping migrant experiences of cultural transformation, and how migrant experiences have re-configured culturally differentiated practices of photography, case studies on migration from Europe, Central America, and North America position photography as entwined with cultural histories of migration and cultural transformation in the United States.

Contributors: Sarah Bassnett (Western University), David Bate (University of Westminster), Justin Carville (Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire), Erina Duganne (Texas State University), Orla Fitzpatrick (National Museum of Ireland), Bridget Gilman (Independent Scholar), Aleksandra Idzior (University of Fraser Valley), Alexandra Irimia (University of Western Ontario), Sandra Križić Roban (Institute of Art History, Zagreb), Sigrid Lien (University of Bergen), Helene Roth (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Leslie Ureña (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Contact Zones: Photography, Migration, and the United States
Justin Carville and Sigrid Lien

PHOTOGR APHIES, REPRESENTATIONS, AND MIGRATIONS

The Figure of Migration
David Bate

VERNACULAR PHOTOGR APHIES AND MIGR ATION

From Cavan to Kansas: A Photographic Album of Family Migration from Ireland to North America
Orla Fitzpatrick

A Letter from Pat in America: Photo-remittances and the Irish American Diaspora
Justin Carville

DIASPORIC IMAGINATIONS

“First Pictures”: New York through the Lens of Emigrated European Photographers in the 1930s and 1940s
Helene Roth

Migrating Images of War and Dislocation: From War Zone to Contact Zone and from Photography to Photomontage
Aleksandra Idzior

Far from Home: Winston Vargas in Washington Heights
Leslie Ureña

EXHIBITING MIGRATIONS

A Box, a Suitcase, a Museum Photographic Records of Croatian Immigrants to the United States
Sandra Križić Roban

What Moves You? Georges Didi-Huberman’s Arts of Passage and Pittsburgh Stories of Migration
Alexandra Irimia

DOCUMENTING MIGRATIONS

Searching for Oleana: Contemporary Photographic Negotiations of Migration and Settler-Colonial Tropes
Sigrid Lien

The Photographer as Advocate: Representing Migrant Communities in San Francisco and Tijuana
Bridget Gilman

Witnessing the Trauma of Undocumented Migrants in Mexico
Sarah Bassnett

There Was no Record of Her Smile: Muriel Hasbun’s X post facto Erina Duganne

Contributors
Gallery with Color Plates

Justin Carville

Justin Carville teaches historical and theoretical studies in photography at the Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire.

Sigrid Lien

Sigrid Lien teaches modern and contemporary art history, including theory and history of photography at the Department of Literary, Linguistic and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen.