Photography: Race, Rights and Representation - Mark Sealy

Following the highly influential Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, this collection of essays, interviews and reflections gives new depth to Mark Sealy’s work challenging the legacies of colonial Othering in photography over a quarter of a century.

Weaving together analyses of work by Black photographers in the UK and internationally, interviews with key figures and personal reflections on the changing landscape of Black photography, this book offers an exploration of the past, present and future of decolonial visual practices. Sealy marks out a new path for photography – jazz-like, sensorial and experimental – in order to free it from the classifying colonial lens, offering the reader the opportunity to move both conceptually and spiritually into new visual realms when reading an image.

Photography: Race, Rights and Representation is a vital addition to the decolonial project occurring in contemporary photography and visual practice from one of its leading curatorial figures.

Mark Sealy is interested in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of Autograph ABP (London) since 1991 and in his role as director has produced artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide. He has written for many international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture, and Next Level. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall coauthored the critically acclaimed Different, which focuses on photography and identity politics.

His many projects include the co-curation of The Unfinished Conversation / Encoding Decoding and Human Rights Human Wrongs, curated for Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto and the Photographers Gallery, and  Gordon Parks: A Choice of Weapons for Side Gallery Newcastle.

Mark has served as a photography jury member for World Press Photo, the Carmignac Gestion photojournalism award and the Sony World Photo award. He chaired the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book award in 2015 and the  Hassleblad Photography Award in 2017.

Sealy has guest-lectured at institutions including the Royal College of Art and Tate Britain, Fabrica, and devised a global photography MA studies programme for Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has been awarded the Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society and a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire award for services to photography (2013). He gained his PhD from Durham University England, focusing on photography and cultural violence.