This issue of Visual Studies brings together two synergistic Special Sections. Special Sections provide an opportunity for guest editors to curate 3-5 thematically related articles to appear together in a general issue. Due to our significant backlog of content, the traditional Special Issue format – where an entire issue of the journal is devoted to a collection of guest edited articles – is currently untenable within a reasonable publication timeframe. The Special Section format is designed to facilitate the timely publication of smaller-scale guest edited thematic collections of contemporary research articles – preserving the function and role of the Special Issue within the affordances of our publication schedule.
In this issue, our first Special Section, guest edited by Nicole Doerr and Anna Schober, brings together a collection of contemporary articles on Visual Intervention and the (Re)enactment of Democracy. As the guest editors explain, ‘pictorial and visual interventions have become central to how tensions, identities, political attitudes and values are staged and negotiated in contemporary societies.’ Doerr and Schober’s Introduction to this special section provides a detailed discussion of the role of visual interventions in enacting democracy, and the use of visual media for political purposes. They note that while such interventions may further democratising endeavours, they may also paradoxically undermine democracy, and even encourage totalitarian closure.
Our second Special Section, guest edited by Ozge Ozduzen and Umut Korkut, is devoted to the topic of Far-right Visual Extremism. In their Introduction to this section, the guest editors note that ‘visual symbols … are crucial [for] far-right political mobilisation … [T]hey provide rich materials for content creators … and make new audiences by exploiting accessible, ubiquitous, and immediate features of visual communication.’ This collection of articles explores the ways in which far right groups mobilise visual communication in both legacy print media and contemporary social media.
Marziya Mohammedali’s Picture/Talk provides a framing for this issue’s focus on visual interventions used to promote and convey political values. Here, Mohammedali reflects on her practice as a protest photographer, through an examination of a single photograph of protesters obscured behind a placard featuring the ‘sensitive content’ sign. This icon is more often encountered in virtual environments, where it functions to warn viewers of potentially graphic and disturbing images. But Mohammedali argues that this protective icon may also reinforce the censorship of particular stories – in this case, those around the death of Jina Amini. As she notes, ‘the message around sensitive content becomes multiply layered, a commentary on how the digital space can both amplify and restrict access to important images … the people in the image … chose to hide … behind the placard, positioning themselves as the sensitive content and bringing this form of restriction into the physical protest space.’
In her article, ‘Majoritarianism and Digital Rights: Understanding Kashmir and the ‘Othering of Other’ in the Context of India, Ankita Chatterjee also addresses the nexus between digital space and physical protest in her examination of the counter narratives adopted by people protesting against the internet ban imposed on Kashmir – a measure which effectively silenced this vulnerable population. She notes that the external referents for these protest symbols also served to forge solidarity and identification with allied historical protests internationally.
Our remaining articles continue our focus on visuality and democracy, in considering the visual framing of election campaigns and elected representatives. Gizem Melek and Zohair Raza draw attention to the increasingly powerful role of social media platforms in electoral campaigns and political communication in their comparative analysis of the visual framing of AP, CNN and FOX News Instagram coverage of the 2020 US Presidential candidates, while Gizem Melek and Ezgi Müyesseroğlu further explore the role of Instagram in political communication, with a focus on the visual narratives employed by Ekrem İmamoğlu during his successful campaign in the 2019 Istanbul Mayoral Elections. Finally, Russell Chun investigates the ways in which the Biden Presidency visually framed Vice President Harris as co-equal to President Biden during their first 100 days in office. Chun notes that this framing of Harris accorded her a symbolic power that also worked to (re)integrate the USA’s diverse communities into the national narrative.
In our cover image for this issue, Marziya Mohammedali responds to the theme of democracy in her documentation of a powerful moment in a protest held on Invasion Day/Survival Day in Australia. As she explains:
Invasion Day/Survival Day protests in Australia are held every year on January 26, the date marked officially as Australia Day and linked with the arrival of the First Fleet. The protests mark ongoing resistance against the occupation of Aboriginal land, with protestors drawing attention to the genocide of First Nations peoples, calling for changing the date of Australia day, or pushing for the commemoration to be scrapped altogether. The cover image ‘Shadows of Country’ is from an Invasion Day protest in January 2023, in Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia). It documents a moment from the protest where First Nations people stop in the middle of a key road intersection to dance, bringing a crucial cultural practice into the protest space. The young person in this photo is carrying the Aboriginal flag with their arms stretched out like wings, evoking a sense of flight, and the shadow of their body showing through. For many young Aboriginal people, the connection to culture and their homelands is like these shadows: always there, changing through generations of displacement and removals, but a constant link with Country, Aboriginal identity, and histories.
‘Shadows of Country.’ January 26, 2023. Perth, Western Australia. Photograph ©Marziya Mohammedali