A Time, a Place, Our Gaze: Re-framing the Subaltern

The Pop List January 17th, 2026

Slavery North

Photography provoked a cataclysmic rupture in the representational field of Western imperialism. This is not hyperbole. Most people fail to recognize that the colonial archive left behind by western empires during their violent incursions into the Americas were not merely documentary – a written and printed paper trail. It was also simultaneously, and often dominantly visual. Not a mere mirror on a fixed society, art and visual culture produced and solidified the colonial logic that underpinned slavery’s perverse racial hierarchy and helped to structure a society in which it became normal and legal to buy and sell enslaved African people as chattel.

Fig. 1
Enslaved Africans were not just brutalized by corporal punishment, sexual violence, and psychological terror, they did not have the time, materials, or the cultural capital to create (or even to desire to create) most “high” art forms. Invented after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, photography dramatically challenged the established representational regime by shredding its economic and social norms.

Fig. 2

By the 1840s and 1850s, photographic studios were common in urban cities in Canada and

the USA. These studios provided the ease of physical access but more importantly, the extraordinary difference in prices between “high” art portraits (like oil paintings and marble sculpture) and photographic ambrotypes, the latter by the 1850s often 25¢ to 40¢, meant that popular class people of all backgrounds including black communities could finally access self-representation on their own terms and by their own design. Suddenly (and perhaps seemingly magically to many people at the time) black people appeared as they wished, in the clothing, with the poses, lighting, and props, with the facial expressions, contexts, backdrops, and beside the family, friends, and loved ones that they chose.

Fig. 3

The photographs that Kenneth Scott has assembled in this groundbreaking exhibition are the result of this technological advance that provoked a cataclysmic representational rupture and their power resides in the fact that they represent black individuals and communities through a black photographic lens that refused the mainstreamed white racist vision. Instead, we see loving family congregations (Fig. 1), intimate gatherings, playful moments (Fig. 2), weddings (Fig. 3), happy families, elegant black individuals, couples, and groups poised and shining (Figs. 4 & 5), and precious black children enjoying moments of play. (Fig. 6)

Fig. 4

Kenneth Scott’s collection had its inaugural exhibition at the Saint John Arts Centre in New Brunswick from 12 January to 8 March2024. The exhibition was covered by Black Maple Magazine in an article by Chris Gismondi in which an updated version appears in the new exhibition catalogue. Slavery North is proud to host its second showing at 50 Arrow Gallery in Easthampton, Massachusetts from 29 January to 12 April 2026.

Fig. 5

For Canadians and foreigners alike, New Brunswick is not the first place that people consider when thinking of black Canadian communities and histories. Guided by population size and cultural dominance, people tend first to think of Toronto and Montreal. But one would be mistaken to overlook the deep and compelling histories of black presence in the Maritime provinces of Canada, histories which stretch back to the 1600s. Originally a part of Nova Scotia, at 71,450 km² (27,590 sq mi), New Brunswick is one of the smallest Canadian provinces. It is fitting that this photographic collection’s first trip outside of Canada is to New England, another region where a centuries-long black presence (as embodied in histories of Transatlantic Slavery and beyond) has been largely denied and overlooked.

Fig. 6

New England will surely provide fruitful ground for viewers to pose provocative questions that open new conversations and insights about how the earth-shifting technology of photography transformed the field of representation for black individuals and communities for the better.

Exhibition Catalogue:
Available from Black Maple Magazine Publishing, forthcoming February 2026

Buy the Book

Sponsored, Mounted, and Presented by: Slavery North

Exhibition:
A Time, a Place, Our Gaze: Re-framing the Subaltern

Dates:
29 January to 12 April 2026

Venue:
50 Arrow Gallery
116 Pleasant St, Suite 244
Eastworks Building
Easthampton, MA, USA
01027

Opening Hours:

Monday-Friday 10am – 5pm
Saturday, Sunday 12pm – 4pm

50 Arrow Gallery Contact:
Tel: (860) 214-6214
Email: info@50arrowgallery.com

Slavery North Contact:
Roxanne Cornellier, Director of Curriculum and Outreach
Email: rcornellier@umass.edu

A Time, a Place, Our Gaze: Re-framing the Subaltern

Categories

View All Posts

Features

The Scholar’s Couch

The Pop List

The Self-Care Circle

Discover Canada’s untold Black history by signing up for our free course!