Shifting Perception: Photographing Disabled People During the Civil Rights Era
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Keywords
art history, enfreakment, “other”
Abstract
During the American Civil Rights Era, photographic perception of disabled people shifted from constructs that empowered the abled “normal” to an empathetic awareness of social isolation and enfreakment. Through rhetorics of the stare, photographers demonstrated increased cognizance of what it meant to be an “other” in a society that valued homogeneity.
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Image Credits
Figure 1 - Elliott Erwitt, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1950. © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos, New York, New York
Figure 2 - Elliott Erwitt, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1950. © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos, New York, New York
Figure 3 - Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1969. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Figure 4 - Garry Winogrand, London, 1967. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
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Timothy W. Hiles, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Tennessee
Timothy W. Hiles, PhD is associate professor of art history at the University of Tennessee where his area of expertise is late 19th and early 20th century European art and the history of photography and film. Dr. Hiles has authored Thomas Theodor Heine: Fin-de-Siecle Munich and The Origins of Simplicissimus, as well as articles, papers, and book chapters.