The Camera as Witness: articulating Black lived experiences in Liverpool and the North West through photography pre-1948

这个博士项目旨在批判性地探索黑人社区的视觉表现和“黑色的生活经验”（法农1986年）在英国-重点是西北-在20世纪世纪上半叶。对黑人社区的摄影研究往往集中在战后英国的摄影师和图像上，因为帝国温德鲁什抵达英国海岸后-通常被定位为移民和存在的分水岭时刻。通过档案分析，本研究试图通过调查1948年前摄影的存在和性质，其生产和使用的背景，并评估其解释和收集的现有方法来扩展和细微差别这一概念。虽然斯图尔特·霍尔（1984），马克·西利（2019）和保罗·吉尔罗伊（Paul Gilroy）等学者已经进行了重要的工作，但他们的研究成果仍然很重要。（1993; 2011），对伦敦以外的黑人“生活经历”的文献研究较少。这种代表性的缺乏对利物浦来说尤其明显--利物浦是一个多元文化的港口城市，被广泛认为是最古老的黑人社区的所在地。虽然确切的人口数字无法确定，但1919年和1948年是利物浦沿着其他港口城市发生针对黑人社区的种族暴力事件的关键日期。使用霍尔（1984）和坎普（2017）的关键理论，将摄影定位为自我建设的工具，其读数为感官，这项研究询问了英国的黑人身份是如何在透镜前后表达的，在种族紧张，殖民主义和帝国的背景下。它还询问如何通过考虑这些图像存在，使用和传播的空间背景，通过摄影表达可见性和存在。以我自己的家族史和与利物浦的联系为起点，这个项目探索了历史和感官的维度，看到，发现和阅读摄影;问它的存在和不存在，告诉我们黑人的生活经历。 与文化机构中更广泛的反种族主义对话产生共鸣，该项目将协同通知解释，存档和编目的做法，支持黑人生活经验的历史广度的理解。使用的理论，解决机构的对象和照片，这个项目将调查的做法，通过图像描绘早期黑人社区可以重新解释和重新激活。通过与文化机构和相关社区合作，该项目将有助于为未来的解释实践制定一种包容和灵活的方法。

This doctoral project aims to critically explore visual representations of Black communities and the 'lived experience of Blackness' (Fanon 1986) in Britain - with a focus on the North West - during first half of the 20th century. Studies of photography of and by Black communities tend to centre on photographers and images in post-war Britain after the arrival of Empire Windrush on British shores - often positioned as the watershed moment of migration and presence. Through archival analysis, this research seeks to expand and nuance this notion by investigating the existence and nature of pre-1948 photography, its contexts of production and use, and evaluate existing approaches to its interpretation and collection.Although significant work has been undertaken by scholars like Stuart Hall (1984) Mark Sealy (2019) and Paul Gilroy (1993; 2011), there is less research into the documentation of the Black 'lived experience' outside of London. This lack of representation is particularly noticeable for Liverpool - a multicultural port city and widely recognised as home to the oldest Black community. Although exact population figures cannot be definitively stated, 1919 and 1948 were key dates in which Liverpool, along with other port cities saw significant moments of racially motivated violence against its Black communities. Using key theorisations like those from Hall (1984) and Campt (2017) that position photography as tool of self-construction and its readings as sensory, this research asks how Black identities in Britain were articulated in front of and behind the lens, against the backdrop of racial tension, colonialism, and Empire. It also asks how visibility and presence was expressed through photography by considering the spatial contexts in which such images existed, was used, and circulated. With my own family history and connection to Liverpool as a starting point, this project explores the historical and sensory dimensions to seeing, finding, and reading photography; asking what its existence and absence, tells us of Black lived experiences. Resonating with wider anti-racist conversations in cultural institutions, this project will collaboratively inform interpretive, archiving, and cataloguing practices that support understandings of the historical breadth of Black lived experiences. Using theory that addresses the agency of objects and photographs, this project will investigate practices through which images depicting early Black communities can be reinterpreted and reactivated. Through working with cultural institutions and relevant communities, this project will contribute to developing an inclusive and flexible approach to future interpretive practice.