CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/31/2018

Teju Cole on the Superhero Photographs of the Black Lives Matter movement in 'Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance'

Featured image, of activist Iesha Evans being arrested by riot police on July 9, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is reproduced from Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance, the remarkable new compendium from Lars Müller. It is analyzed in the chapter, "Troubled Pictures: The Superhero Photographs of the Black Lives Matter Movement" by Teju Cole, who writes, "The photograph, taken by the Reuters journalist Jonathan Bachman on July 9, 2016, was made at an inauspicious time. The rally at which it happened was in response to recent killings of black men by the police, particularly the death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. But just two days earlier, the nation was shocked by the murder of five police officers in Dallas by a lone gunman. Our collective grief, always complicated, took on wicked new fissures."