no gaze or hand can hold you there is a screening programme whose title is loosely borrowed from the foreword of Toni Morrison’s second book, Sula. This screening centres on 20th-century photography through the black gaze. The films invite you to examine the importance of visual agency and how the ability to represent oneself can become means for salvation, for revelation, for pleasure, for exposure, for emergence.

The two films in the programme bring forward the work of Mama Casset, a prolific Senegalese post-colonial portrait photographer and the previously unpublished photographic archive of African-American essayist, Richard Wright.

The screening is accompanied by a specially commissioned A3 photo collage of the same title. There are 15 of these available and will be allocated through the sign-up sheet here.

Beulah Ezeugo, Curate-It Fellow 2023

How to watch

These events will be available to view for free online for 72 hours via the Curate-It VoD platform. They will be available in the UK only. The films have closed captions.

Films will be available to view from 19:00 on the first day to 19:00 on the last day. If you begin to view the film on or slightly before 19:00 on the last day of viewing, you will be able to watch it continuously through.

Films in running order (c. 84 min):

Nucleus of the Great Union The Otolith Group / United Kingdom / 2018 / 32 min / English with closed captions

The Nucleus of the Great Union reimagines the digital afterlives of novelist, Richard Wright's images by plotting the trajectories of their movement through the networks of black internationalism in the age of platform capitalism.

African Photo (Mama Casset) Elisa Mereghetti / France / 2014 / 52 min / French with English subtitles and closed captions

A documentary film on the life and work of Senegalese photographer Mama Casset. Mama Casset (Saint Louis 1908 – Dakar 1992) is considered one of the forefathers of Senegalese photography. He belongs to the generation of West Africans artists who,during the Fifties, gave birth to the great season of studio portrait photography. His story intersects with the unfolding of the great political, social, and cultural transformations which led in 1960 to Senegal’s independence.