Capitalism: Slavery

Four explorations of images, three of which Ekphrasis, that struggle with the liberal, progressive and puritan ideologies in the US. Starting with two stereographic photographs, Ken Jacobs literally recalls, relives, if not to say resuscitates the racist and pro-slavery origins of American capitalism. Similarly, William E. Jones unveils how Roy Emerson Stryker, responsible for the photographic campaign that created a stock of images containing 145,000 photos during the New Deal, “killed” certain images by punching holes in their negatives. Jones explores the still unanswered question of who was in charge of selecting the images to be “killed” in his eponymous book “Killed: Rejected Images of the Farm Security Administration” (2010) and subsequently in his two film installations of 2017, REJECTED and 3000 KILLED. In an effort to document the ecological disaster caused by the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, Lech Kowalski compiles pictures from residents and juxtaposes them with mass-media images as well as with a classic documentary, LOUISIANA STORY by Robert Flaherty (1948), which celebrates the oil industry. (Nicole Brenez) 

With: 
CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR, USA 2006, Ken Jacobs, 14 min
THE END OF THE WORLD BEGINS WITH ONE LIE, USA 2011, Lech Kowalski, 62 min
KILLED, USA 2009, William E. Jones, 2 min