Nicholas Mirzoeff joins Magnum Foundation as Scholar in Residence

Nicholas Mirzoeff presenting at our 2018 Photography Expanded Symposium on Counter Histories

We are honored to share that Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, has been awarded the 2020 Mellon/ACLS Scholars & Society Fellowship to partner with the Magnum Foundation in developing his research on anti-racist visual activism.

A preview of this critically important work can be seen here, in Professor Mirzoeff’s recent essay entitled “Whiteness, Visuality, and the Virus,” in which he describes how the right-wing rallies against the removal of Confederate monuments have morphed into racialized and xenophobic protests against state public health stay-at-home orders.

Health care workers stand in the street in counter-protest to hundreds of people who gathered at the State Capitol to demand the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver, Colorado, U.S. April 19, 2020. REUTERS/Alyson McClaran MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

As he writes, the “expanded photographic field requires critical and visual work that is not just aware of racism but is actively antiracist and intersects with issues of gender and sexuality.” This is a framework that is critical to our work at the Magnum Foundation as we work to expand the parameters of visual storytelling while recognizing the limitations of the medium and its historical links with racist and colonialist structures and regimes.

This work will be collaboratively developed through workshops and an online publication, culminating in a major public event in 2021. We are excited about our work together over the coming months and look forward to inviting our community into the conversations generated by Professor Mirzoeff’s research. 

In announcing this fellowship, we also pay tribute to our colleague and friend Maurice Berger, whose pioneering work advanced our understanding of photography and whiteness.