Study in Black and White

“Working at the intersection of race, humor, and photography studies, this important new book supplies a new lens through which to view all of these disciplines. Tanya Sheehan has taken the field of racialized humor in an original direction through a rigorous and nuanced examination of the impact of photography upon visual humor from the nineteenth century to the present. Particularly fascinating is Sheehan’s consideration of camera comedy and the minstrel stage, both in America and abroad. Eminently readable, Study in Black and White is both appealing and illuminating.”

—Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

“Readers of American art and visual culture interested in critical race studies, transnational exchange, and the movement of ideas between media, particularly performance and visual art, will benefit from Sheehan’s historically grounded and convincing accounts that offer new perspectives on US racial discourse within and through photography.”

—caa.reviews

“A remarkable reflection on photography and performance in cultural history. By reexamining humor and questioning popular images that demoralized and uplifted the black portrait in early photography, Tanya Sheehan introduces her unease as a reader of such imagery while interweaving the scholar’s critical eye on representations of black people globally and over time. Brilliant and pioneering!”

—Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

“Ubiquitous and often insidious, racial humor is a pervasive form of American cultural expression. Tanya Sheehan’s insightful and well-researched Study in Black and White: Photography, Race, Humor moves beyond the laughs to examine how humor in the photographic medium has been employed and deployed as an agent, a conduit, and a dog whistle in America’s complex negotiation of race and representation.”

—Adrienne L. Childs, Associate, W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University

“Sheehan’s account of race, humor, and commercial photography warrants an attentive hearing from researchers and teachers who are seeking to understand the politics of race as it unfolds on the streets and in social media—in years past and in the days to come.”

—Chris Dingwall American Historical Review

“This book about humor is not funny. But its account of cruel, dehumanizing caricatures sheds light on the infiltration of racism into some of the most basic and mundane sectors of the history of—mainly—the United States. Moreover, the reproduction of these caricatures in the context of literature about photography or in photographs gives them an insidious power with consequences for the myth of photographic truth.”

—Margaret Olin Art Bulletin