The Brooklyn Rail

Over the last twenty-five years, the photo book anthology has emerged as a distinct genre within photographic literature. According to curator Clément Chéroux, a bibliography of such anthologies would now run to over eighty volumes. They signaled a paradigm shift in how photography is considered, focusing more on books rather than prints on gallery walls. As Chéroux has written, this phenomenon embodies the “new face of photophilia.” Importantly, these anthologies are also self-conscious exercises in canon formation. “The great masters and masterpieces had to be selected and organized by country or by genre,” Chéroux noted. This conferred an aura upon photo books akin to that of fine art.

Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present is the sixth thematic anthology published by the group 10×10 Photobooks, founded in 2012 to promote engagement with the medium. Edited by 10×10 founders Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich, it departs from the model established by previous photo book anthologies in several respects. Most notably, it extends well beyond photo books, even when defining that medium broadly to include everything from lavishly produced volumes to self-published artist books. Flashpoint! incorporates not only books but also zines, fliers, posters, alternative newspapers, and other ephemeral printed materials. As Lederman recently stated, one of the project's goals was to break down the “rigid format categories that isolate photo books from other printed photographic materials.” By doing so, Flashpoint! challenges the aura that has grown around photo books through their canonization in anthologies and instead returns them to an original function: objects of circulation and activism rather than marketplace relics.

Delving into the potent intersection of visual culture and political activism, Flashpoint! is the product of an ambitious research project involving three preliminary researchers who then enlisted twenty-two writers and researchers (drawn from the ranks of independent scholars and graduate students), eight essayists, and eleven catalogers. This diverse team accounts for the broad range of material and approaches found in both the essays and individual entries.

While the overall scope is global, many sub-themes focus on specific resistance movements. The book is structured into seven thematic chapters, each divided into four sub-themes: Anti (with subsections on Anpo, Government, Globalization, and Censorship); Gender (Women’s Bodies, Women’s Rights, AIDS, and LGBTQ+ rights); Displacement, Race and Class, Environment, Politics, and War and Violence. This organization highlights not only the diversity of photography's role in resistance but also the varying aesthetic strategies employed across different historical and political contexts. While the editors maintain a politically agnostic stance, the vast majority of the included material originates from progressive movements. Flashpoint! underscores the enduring significance of print as a medium that both records and catalyzes social change.

In “Looking Beyond the Photobook in Japanese Protest Photography of the 1960s and 1970s,” Marc Feustel examines Japanese protest photography published around the Anpo protests—the massive resistance movement against the US presence in Japan during the 1960s. Many of the photo books from this period became sought after by collectors in the West following their inclusion in various anthologies. By juxtaposing canonical books such as Hiroshi Hamaya’s Ikari to Kanashimi no Kiroku (Record of Anger and Sadness) (1960) and Kazuo Kitai’s Teikoh (Resistance) (1965) with a 1970 poster highlighting a strike by workers on a US base in Okinawa, Flashpoint! re-situates these artifacts within an activist context.

The volume also explores the visual strategies employed in protest photography. At its core, a belief in art’s social function unites all the material in Flashpoint!. The integration of art, design, and activism has historical precedents, most notably in Russian Constructivism. The DNA of Constructivism—bold graphics, photomontage, dynamic typography, and geometric compositions conveying movement—can be seen in works as diverse as the Brazilian domestic violence awareness poster that says “Violencia, Nao!” [No Violence!], or the feminist poster stating that “77% of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant,” whose design was inspired (and endorsed) by artist Barbara Kruger.

In his introductory essay, archivist Arthur Fournier reflects on the democratization of print technology: “This vast and unexpected transfer of a hitherto godlike technology from the war machine to civilian users set the conditions for an epochal shift in the power dynamics between the masses and those authorities who had previously policed their print media.” Following this logic, access to image production—whether in fliers, posters, or photo books—enabled their role in resistance movements. However, there is a deeper complexity at play. Media theorist Vilém Flusser’s concept of the apparatus offers a more nuanced understanding of how photographic media shapes perception and reality. Flusser argued that photographs are not mere representations but are dictated by the technology that produces them. In the context of Flashpoint!, this framework allows us to see how protest photography and printed materials do more than document history—they actively construct it. The selection, framing, and dissemination of images influences public perception and contributes to shaping political discourse.

By incorporating materials ranging from self-published books to mass-produced fliers, Flashpoint! demonstrates how media is embedded within technological and institutional structures that shape meaning. The act of publishing and distributing protest imagery is not neutral; it is an intervention that shapes how history is recorded and remembered.