Instagrammable Visuals and Visual Supremacy
“No Amount of Money Will Save You”, artist unknown. 1023 Mission, South of Market, from the series My Ancestors Followed Me Here, 2020; © Erina Alejo.
Visual supremacy
Artist note:
is a term I learned from artist Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, who researched this concept during her MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. Sita expands on a social media post referencing September 9, 2020—the day of the orange skies:
For those of us who are sighted, vision is a large part of how we have learned to survive. I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about visual supremacy (shout out to VCS CCA) and how this ties into systems of white supremacy. I wrote a whole thesis about it - the German nature philosopher Lorenz Oken who thought that white men had the strongest sense of sight - which placed them at the top of a racial and sensory hierarchy. Guess who was at the bottom. Some people thought I was a bit out of touch to be writing about white supremacy in 2012.
With Sita’s permission, I used excerpts of her longer post on her analysis of the fervent energy many of us had in documenting the period of orange skies in my wall labels for my photos up on exhibit at SFMOMA for My Ancestors Followed Me Here. Moreover, I also quoted her in the newspaper publication version of the project.
Today Furniture, 2225 Mission Street, Mission District.
Reflection by Erina Alejo on September 9, 2020. Part of My Ancestors Followed Me Here, created for Bay Area Walls, a commission series initiated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2020. This piece is also published in the newspaper format of this project, designed by Jerlyn Jareunpoon Phillips. Photos by Alejo on September 9, 2020.
Instagrammable Visuals and Visual Supremacy
By Erina Alejo
September 9, 2020
Mission Street
California wildfire smoke, trapped by fog in the atmosphere, brought the people of Mission street together-- the longest street in San Francisco/ Yelamu Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Amidst all the economic activity and bustle, people seem kinder, gentler, more approachable, awestruck by the time of day and color of sky.
Today, over 367 million Google search results are produced from “orange skies san francisco”. Social media is inundated with this visual language and supremacy. Sight remains as a driving force and one lexicon of survival. These photos are testaments to this resilience, yet ironically, also capitalize on the tragedy of wildfires engulfing the west coast to produce “Instagrammable” visuals.
Artist Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik expresses on this day of the Instagrammable orange skies: “This circulation of images is the same vocabulary and rhythm used to signify the increase in documentation of police brutality and abuse of power on Black life, among various forms of violence on people, children, lands.
Sita expands: “‘[...] I learn from images and love images. But we need to hold them with criticality as much as we increasingly rely on them as windows.’”
