Cold War Camera explores the visual mediation of the Cold War and illuminates photography’s role in shaping the ways it was prosecuted and experienced. The contributors show how the camera stretched the parameters of the Cold War beyond dominant East-West and US-USSR binaries and highlight the significance of photography from across the global South. Among other topics, the contributors examine the production and circulation of the iconic figure of the “revolutionary Vietnamese woman” in the 1960s and 1970s; photographs connected with the coming of independence and decolonization in West Africa; family photograph archives in China and travel snapshots by Soviet citizens; photographs of apartheid in South Africa; and the circulation of photographs of Inuit Canadians who were relocated to the extreme Arctic in the 1950s. Highlighting the camera’s capacity to envision possible decolonialized futures, establish visual affinities and solidarities, and advance calls for justice to redress violent proxy conflicts, this volume demonstrates that photography was not only crucial to conducting the Cold War, it is central to understanding it.

Contributors. Ariella Azoulay, Jennifer Bajorek, Erina Duganne, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Eric Gottesman, Tong Lam, Karintha Lowe, Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Darren Newbury, Andrea Noble, Sarah Parsons, Gil Pasternak, Thy Phu, Oksana Sarkisova, Olga Shevchenko, Laura Wexler, Guigui Yao, Donya Ziaee, Marta Ziętkiewicz

A biography of Artists Call, an influential 1980s artist group that protested US intervention in Latin America.

The 1980s saw the flourishing of neoliberalism in all realms of culture. In the fine arts, libertarian individualism, media sensationalism, and profit motive converged in million-dollar auctions—and a widespread insistence that activism had no place in the arts. Yet even some participants of this elite New York art world resisted. Dreams of a Continent tells the forgotten story of a diverse collective that defied culture-industry norms by condemning Reagan-era imperialism in Latin America while building transnational solidarity.

Drawing on fresh archival discoveries, Erina Duganne reconstructs the political imagination of Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America. A network with more than a thousand members in New York City, Artists Call produced thirty-one exhibitions in its brief life, along with poetry readings and performances that brought together US and Latin American cultural workers in support of self-determination throughout the hemisphere. This richly illustrated volume shows how the aesthetics of Artists Call emphasized historical contingency in order to envision radically alternative futures. In the process, its activism fostered a global community that overcame stark North-South power imbalances.

Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships considers global feminist coalitional practices in the contemporary visual arts through three key frameworks: transnational solidarity, archives, and kinships and care. The edited volume features emerging and established scholars and artists whose diverse perspectives inspire connections as well as critical points of divergence over the meanings of “feminism,” “transnationalism,” and “art.” Representing grassroots activism, artistic practice, and scholarly and curatorial inquiry, the diversity of approaches, writing styles, and chapter lengths depart from conventional modes of academic writing and provide pedagogical opportunities for students and scholars to use these contributions in a variety of learning environments not limited to the traditional classroom.