Visualising Human Rights
Edited by Jane Lydon
UWA Publishing
Brenda L. Croft’s shut/mouth/scream (2016) and its reference to the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Australia is a fitting choice for the cover of ‘Visualising Human Rights’, a publication exploring questions surrounding the historical reception of human rights via imagery and its legacies in the present.
Leading scholars – Jane Lydon, Sharon Sliwinski, Susie Protschky, Mary Tomsic, Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, Vera Mackie, Fay Anderson, and Croft – explore ideas of humanity, citizenship, atrocity and justice through visual media, including several case studies on the Asia-Pacific region, turning ‘attention to our responsibility as viewers and the ethics of spectatorship’. Photographs herewith evoke empathy, particularly through images of suffering, construct shared humanity and expose the propaganda surrounding violence, conquest and oppression.