Research Catalog

Title

Facing Black Star / edited by Thierry Gervais and Vincent Lavoie.

Author

Gervais, Thierry

Publication

• Toronto : The Image Centre, [2023]
• Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2023]
• ©2023

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Lavoie, Vincent
• Image Centre (Toronto Metropolitan University), publisher.

Description

347 pages : illustrations (some color); 23 cm.

Summary

In 2005, Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University (TMU) acquired the massive collection Black Star Collection of the photo agency previously based in New York City--nearly 292,000 black-and-white prints. Preserved at The Image Centre at TMU, the images include iconic stills of the American Civil Rights movement by Charles Moore, among thousands of ordinary photographs that were classified by theme in the agency's picture library. While the move of the collection from a corporate photo agency to a public cultural institution enables more access, researchers must still face the size of the collection, its structural organization, the materiality of the prints, and the lack of ephemera. Facing Black Star aims to fruitfully highlight this tension between research expectations and challenges.

Series Statement

IMC Books ; 6

Subject

• Black Star (Picture agency)
• Libraries > Special collections > Images, Photographic
• Photojournalism
• Libraries

Contents

• Foreword / Doina Popescu -- Introduction / Thierry Gervais and Vincent Lavoie -- A chronology of the Black Star Publishing Company and the Black Star collection / Alexandra Gooding and Valerie Matteau -- Part 1 -- Questioning the origins of the Black Star collection -- Suitcases, stamps, and paper: piecing together the story of Black Star's Nazi photographs / Nadya Bair -- Dismantling photographic authorship: the many voices of Max Pohly's "German History" in the Black Star collection / Christian Joschke -- The making of the Black Star collection at the Image Centre: framing the move from a commercial entity to a cultural institution and the conundrum of outstanding significance/national importance / Zainub Verjee and Emily McKibbon
• Part 2 -- Generating visibilities in the Black Star collection -- Black Star : gay rights, gay life / Sophie Hackett -- "Smile / social issues / swing": bias and contradiction in evolving archival descriptions of Indigenous subjects / Reilley Bishop-Stall -- "Caribbean misc." finding the Caribbean in the Black Star collection / Alexandra Gooding -- Telling on archival erasure: the stories behind Griffith Davis's Liberia photographs / Drew Thompson -- Picturing wild style: Martha Cooper, Black Star, and New York's Underground / Vanessa Fleet Lakewood -- Part 3 -- Curating the Black Star collection -- Getting to know the unknowable: Black Star and the Rudolph P. Bratty Family collection / Denise Birkhofer -- Reflections on human rights human wrongs / Mark Sealy in conversation with Taous Dahmani -- Speculating on the visual archive of climate change / Benedicte Ramade -- Afterword / Paul Roth.

Call Number

JQE 24-291

ISBN

• 0262047845
• 9780262047845

OCLC

1345459874

Author

Gervais, Thierry, editor.

Title

Facing Black Star / edited by Thierry Gervais and Vincent Lavoie.

Publisher

Toronto : The Image Centre, [2023]

Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2023]

Copyright Date

©2023

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

IMC Books ; 6

Added Author

Gervais, Thierry, editor.

Lavoie, Vincent, editor.

Image Centre (Toronto Metropolitan University), publisher.

Research Call Number

JQE 24-291