In her discussion on violenct images in textbooks and similar educational materials and tools, Seloua Luste Boulbina suggests that contemporary artworks could serve as counterpoints to those images that rehearse and perform colonial gazes (Boulbina, 2021, p. 114). Taking up this idea, I explored with juxtaposing  contemporary artworks to pictures of the object lesson picture books. 

I found some of the thoughts that Fernando Hernández (2012) articulated regarding juxtaposition as a strategy in visual culture education to grasp what might do in the context of my study. When I place one image next to another, a space in between opens that is far from being concrete or definite, as the fine gap that runs along the pictures’ outlines might suggest. This space in between is a productive space that departs from the gap; spontaneously configured, automatic and not consciously structured (Hernández, 2012, p. 28); from here, visual referents and relationships are broadened and multiplied in order to inquire both the images and their imaginaries (Hernández, 2012, p. 23).

It is through the exploration of those relationships that meaning is created and expanded. There is no fixed, true or correct meaning to be found. We and the images are always made and remade in this encounter.

Inconsistencies, ambiguities and ambivalences are not eradicated but embraced in this non-linear, associative process (Ellsworth 2005, p. 22 in Hernández, 2012, p. 27). And there will always be something unspoken that may be interrogated, or not (Hernández, 2012, p. 27).

The work that juxtaposition ignites and that is performed by the viewer is a practice of “weaving and unweaving relationships with and in front of images” (Hernández, 2012, p. 28). Images resonate: one set of images in a narrative evokes another series of images in the viewer. Not identical but metaphorically linked, this diverse set of images summons our everyday life and our biographical experience to that encounter.

Through the practices of looking, both viewer and image are made, co-constituted. The viewer is part of what she, they or he sees, who feeds the stories and does not just passively collect or receive them, “who is shown as a vulnerable character and necessarily in crisis” (Hernández, 2012, p. 28). Juxtaposition requires a reading “that allows us to position ourselves in a fluid and changing way in relation to what we see and how these relationships see us” (Hernández, 2012, p. 27).

The space in between - between the images in juxtaposition, but also the space between viewing subject and the images -  then becomes the space where subjectivity is placed and becomes open to be remade. As such, the place in between is not only a place of interpretation but also “a place of self-identification that reflects on the resonances that the encounter between and with the images triggers in the subject” (Hernández, 2012, p. 25).

The space of the in-between is one of liminality. By allowing for ambiguities and inconsistencies, and conceiving of the space in between as a place where subjectivity is placed and remade, this place of ambiguity and indetermination may dissolve a sense of identity, relaxing the limits of self-understanding, enabling new meanings and values to emerge (Vidiella 2009, pp. 128-130 in Hernández, 2012, p. 24).

Introduction of the

strategy 

Reflections

I have employed the strategy of juxtaposition in my continuous practice as well as in the workshop Images of Nature’s Child – a history workshop TODAY.

 I searched for artworks that critique and analyse the modern/colonial gaze and Whiteness as hegemonic norm: the video-performance Unearthing. In Conversations(2017) by Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, the painting Space to forget by Titus Kaphar and several photographs by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and Buck ElLison. Placing those next to the selected pictures of the object lesson picture book, allows for the interrogation of those in a manner that challenges assumptions of the past as separate from the present and brings to the fore thematic and structural continuities.

This also applies to the representations of Nature's Child as white, innocent child. Here, I relied partially on the juxtaposition of the object lesson pictures with contemporary visual media for children, such as Disney' movies, TV-series and picture books. These do have less of a critical take on the reinstated idea(l)s concerning whiteness. Rather, the work with pastpresents is enabled and the continuous, even though shape-shifting structures of whiteness in articulation with Nature and childhood can become visible - because it is a feature of the functioning of whiteness to erase itself and thereby establish itself as a norm and universal (Blight, 2022; Dyer, 1997; Oliveira, 2023). 

In my continuous performative-archival practice, I employed the strategy of juxtaposition as an open-ended research method. I would explore various combinations, while being attentive in the activity of what would emerge. While the study of repetitive motives appears close at hand, I also worked with juxtaposition that does not operate on the level of iconic similarities alone. Particularly by including contemporary photographic artworks critical of the modern/colonial gaze and whiteness, it was the meanings, associations and affects that they produced that I aimed to invoke when critically studying the object lesson picture books through them. This form of juxtaposing emphasises the interpretative activity that is at play in the act of seeing one or several images.  As such, the strategy of juxtaposing fruitfully can throw into crisis me and you as the viewing subjects with our intersectional positionings and biographic experiences.  

Given the plurality of meanings and the complex work of subjectivity that emerge when seeing juxtaposed pictures, I find that choosing a limited set of pictures for workshop dynamics is useful; the more time is at disposal and the more experience the group has in visual and cultural analysis and/or the discussion theme (here, for example, representations of the Child and notions of Nature), the more complex pictures can be mobilised.

Ressources 

for further engagement with this strategy