Ernest Cole, House of Bondage (New York Random House, 1967)
Charting the transformative power of protest photography across print media over seven decades, 10×10 Photobooks’s latest project redefines the visual language of dissent
The visual language of dissent has long been a mirror to the most pressing societal upheavals, reflecting resilience, rage, and revolution across generations. Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present charts a new course through this complex terrain by broadening the scope beyond the singular focus on photo books often seen in existing platforms and studies of protest aesthetics. By capturing the essence of dissent across posters, zines, independent newspapers, pamphlets, fliers, and journals, it embraces the expansive power of printed photography to influence and document societal and cultural transformations over the last 75 years.
Through its scholarly approach, Flashpoint! – which was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards this year – navigates themes of migration, territorial disputes, gender inequity, class divides, racism, war, and environmental crises, illuminating how protest imagery has become a multifaceted tool and testament to resistance. With essays from voices such as Mark Sealy and Makeda Best, the anthology invites readers into a dialogue between diverse protest movements and their visual manifestations. This holistic approach dismantles rigid categories to offer a more chaotic yet meaningful exploration of the “aesthetic of urgency” captured in both immediate, DIY visuals like protest posters and meticulously curated photo books.
Spanning seven thematic chapters, Flashpoint! fosters critical discourse through a global lens, juxtaposing regional and temporal differences while acknowledging its own limits and biases. Released to coincide with today’s turbulent political climate, its goal is to spark reflection and inspire a more nuanced understanding of resistance’s visual culture. Olga Yatskevich and Russet Lederman are co-founders of 10×10 Photobooks, a multi-platform ongoing series of projects highlighting photo books and engaging the photo book community – BJP sat down with them to discuss their latest publication.
“Activism and resistance have always been strategies to express and voice public and personal dissent. However, more recently, we are seeing and hearing so much partisanship and divisiveness”
Dalia Al-Dujaili: What was the motivation for the Flashpoint!?
Olga Yatskevich: Each 10×10 Photobooks project is shaped through many conversations and brainstorming sessions, often in the context of other 10×10 activities. Russet and I were always interested in protest photo books, and we both have a good number in our personal photo book collections. And of course, in the past decade or so we’ve witnessed an explosion of mass protests, yet activism as an expression of public and personal dissent is not new.
We both agreed that we were curious to dig deeper and it was obvious that while there was a good number of books and articles that discuss various aspects of visual protest, there was definitely a space for a wider research on protest photo books. We decided to expand the scope to bring a wider selection of protest photography in print, Flashpoint! includes a great selection of posters, flyers, pamphlets, and newspapers to provide a more comprehensive context.
Flashpoint! also connects to our earlier 2017 project AWAKE: Protest, Liberty and Resistance, which collected protest photo books through an open-call, and the books were then grouped by themes. Some of those themes translated into the chapters in Flashpoint!, it has seven broad chapters and each includes multiple sub-themes.
DA: The book is in-depth, covering several decades and geographies. Tell me about the research process; how long did it take, how did you find relevant material, and where did you find resources?
Russet Lederman: 10×10 Photobooks tends to work on a three-year cycle with each thematic project; focusing initially on the publication, which then shapes the associated touring reading room, educational programming and research granting initiative. As Olga mentions above, Flashpoint! emerged from AWAKE: Protest, Liberty and Resistance. We had always felt that a publication was needed on the protest topic, so when our What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999 publication was complete and its touring reading room launched in late 2021, we returned to Awake and began to reshape and expand it.
As a longtime photo book collector and researcher, I have always been uncomfortable with the rigid format categories that isolate photo books from other printed photographic materials. When I visit antiquarian bookshops and fairs, I see posters, zines, flyers, newspapers and books all mixed up together. I’ve always felt the dialogue between these associated formats is very organic and ultimately more enlightening, especially when discussing the topic of protest and resistance. The aesthetic differences that can result from the varying production timelines of different formats are visually informative! For example, a DIY poster (tool) quickly created to be used at a protest march or pasted to a wall has a very different aesthetic than a book (document) with a yearlong production schedule that surveys a past or ongoing event. Arthur Fournier, who wrote the first essay in Flashpoint! identifies an “aesthetic of urgency” as the foundation for these DIY tools of protest.
What became important to us as we worked on the book, was creating a structure that allowed the various diverse formats on a given protest theme or sub-theme (and their associated aesthetics) to have a conversation; for the reader to visually compare. Therefore, we decided to organise the book into seven broad themes with multiple sub-themes within each theme, rather than a chronological or geographical structure. That said, within each sub-theme, there are clusters or groupings around a common protest or movement, and these tend to be chronological or geographical.
Once we identified the structure for Flashpoint!, we assembled our team of 22 writers and researchers: eight essayists (who each focused on a sub-theme in a thematic chapter), 11 research-description writers (who wrote the asset summaries) and three preliminary researchers (who helped us identify the selection). Our researchers and research-description writers are independent scholars, MA and PhD students and candidates. Olga and I made the final selection using Awake as our starting point, but then adding research done at various libraries, foundations and activist organisations, particularly the New York Public Library, Center for the Study of Political Graphics, as well as existing online and print resources on protest typography, posters, aesthetics and books and suggestions from our essayists.
Olga and I are aware that our selection leans a bit towards the USA but have tried to make sure there are many non-American voices throughout the publication. Our goal is that the diversity of voices in the included photo books, zines, fliers, posters and independent journals and newspapers will encourage a constructive and respectful discourse on many complex societal issues.
DA: Why did you choose to publish the book at this time? Why is it relevant to today?
RL: From the very start, we knew we would release Flashpoint! at the same time as the 2024 United States Presidential elections. The past years have been marked by protests around the world in response to the current US elections, Israel-Hamas war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, divisive political ideologies, human rights violations, restricted personal freedoms and reproductive rights, environmental crises and state repression, to name a few of the most contentious issues of our time. Activism and resistance have always been strategies to express and voice public and personal dissent. However, more recently, we are seeing and hearing so much partisanship and divisiveness.
This lack of dialogue and the constant shouting and “cancelling,” whether in the streets, online or via traditional media needed to be framed in a way that allowed for a more considerate and nuanced review and discussion – and only reaffirmed our view that a global and historical overview of protest photography in print was necessary at this moment. There are numerous viewpoints in Flashpoint! – some we may not personally agree with – and we recognise that the selection of books, zines, posters, fliers and independent newspapers presented in this project cannot cover every perspective on a given protest topic, but our goal has always been that the diversity of voices in those included will encourage a constructive and respectful discourse.
DA: Could you each pick out one or two bodies of work that stand out to you?
RL: One of my favourite objects in this project under the Political chapter, Student Protests sub-theme is The Chestnut Burr, the yearbook for Kent State University from 1971. It looks like a typical American university yearbook with photographs of clubs, students, faculty, staff and sports teams, but it is not! It was published in the year following the 4 May 1970 Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard that killed four and wounded nine unarmed college students. The student editors of this publication use the yearbook to document these traumatic and historic events with a 36-page section recording the initially peaceful protests that sparked the event, the subsequent shootings and the national news it generated. Also included is the standard portrait section of all the graduating seniors, however, blank spaces are left for those killed. Its potency comes from our collective double-take.
I’m also partial to Documento: A Greve do ABC, a zine from Brazil that is found under the Race & Class chapter, Workers’ Rights sub-theme. The zine was introduced to us by Miguel Del Castillo from the Instituto Moreira Salles Library in São Paulo. It highlights a metalworker strike in the ABC region of São Paulo, but I very much like how it includes early career photographs of Brazil’s current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 1980, when he was a labour organiser.
Also standing out for me are two posters in the Gender chapter under the sub-theme of Women’s Bodies from the Pro-choice Public Education Project in 1998 – “77% of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant” – that appeared on New York buses and subways. Targeting a post-Roe v. Wade generation that took their reproduction rights for granted, these posters were an early warning of what was to come in 2022 when the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. 77 per cent of anti-abortion leaders are men. looks like it was done by Barbara Kruger, but it was not. Rather the DeVito/Verdi advertising agency in charge of the campaign received her permission to use her style for this poster.
Various Photographers, Documento: A Greve do ABC (Editor Caraguatá, 1980)
OY: I am a big fan of Yangon Fashion 1979 – Fashion=Resistance, edited by Lukas Birk. Like many Birk’s projects, it was produced in collaboration with locals, the book focuses on the role fashion played in sparking imagination and a personal form of rebellion in Yangon in the late 1970s. That was a period of dictatorial power, food shortages, and government corruption and in that context photography became a tool for self-expression. Young people would dress up and go to photo studios to take photos. It became a way to express style, and also resist the controls of the regime. The book itself is extremely vertical, it’s long and thin, and it is pretty exciting as an object.
Another book that I find important, especially talking about environmental issues, is The Eyes of Earth by Solmaz Daryani, a very personal photo book about environmental disaster by the Iranian photographer. It tells the story about Lake Urmia located in Iran, where the artist used to vacation with her family. It used to be one of the largest natural saltwater lakes in the world, but in the past decades, the lake has dried out, losing about 88 percent of its surface area. Daryani brings together images from her family archives, and happy memories of her childhood, with more recent shots of the lake. It highlights a very personal side of the environmental tragedy.
DA: Finally, how do you hope the book will be received, and what do you hope its legacy will be?
OY: Flashpoint! brings together various formats of protest photography, spread across numerous regions and over seven decades, all covering innumerable causes. This is an opportunity to see side by side assets from various regions, to note differences and similarities. This selection is rather subjective, but it does show how various print formats function aesthetically, socially, politically and conceptually. We hope that Flashpoint! will serve as a platform for engaged discussions and a space to present diverse voices.
