AFTERIMAGE: THE JOURNAL OF
MEDIA ARTS AND CULTURAL
CRITICISM
Founded in 1969 by the writer, photographer, and
curator Nathan Lyons, the Visual Studies Work-
shop (VSW) in Rochester, New York, was also the
birthplace of the well-known journalAfterimage:
The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism.
Afterimageremains the primary journal devoted to
a critical understanding of issues in photography
and art, despite its unassuming black and white
broadsheet format. Since its conception, the jour-
nal has taken a radical political stance.Afterimage
was founded in order to provide a forum for the
investigation of the relationships between politics,
art and photography. As Grant H. Kester writes in
the introduction to the anthology ofAfterimage
essays published in 1998, the questions motivating
Afterimage’sfounding were,
What is the relationship between art production and
more direct (or at least more conventionally recogniz-
able) forms of political struggle and protest? What con-
stitutes an activist art practice? And what is the role of
criticism, and the critic, in relation to such a practice?
(p.1,Art, Activism, and Oppositionality: Essays from
Afterimage. Durham and London: Duke University
Press, [1998]).The founding ofAfterimagecoincided with bur-
geoning socio-political critiques of photographic
representation promulgated by such scholars as
John Tagg, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Victor Bur-
gin, Rosalind Krauss, and Allan Sekula, influenced
by French post-structuralist philosophers such as
Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes.Afterimage’s
program was also concurrent with the initial stir-
rings and subsequent growth of revisionist art his-
tory and was part of a general movement towards
visual culture studies at large, which included
movements to break down barriers between scho-
larly disciplines.
The VSW began as an experimental, multi-pur-
pose space, incorporating a gallery, archive,
library, media center, educational programs and
a press for the publication of artists’ books as well
asAfterimage. Lyons founded the VSW after leav-
ing his post as chief curator and assistant director
at the George Eastman House’s International
Museum of Photography (IMP), also located in
Rochester, so it is not a coincidence that Roche-
ster has become a nexus of Visual Culture Studies
and a hotbed of photographic activity. Graduate
students and artists contributed to the workshop’s
initial and continued efforts, and Joan Lyons was
originally in charge of the book publishing section.
The organization even had a VSW Book Bus that
brought the publications and ideology of the VSW
to the citizens of Rochester. Today, the State Uni-
versity of New York (SUNY) College at Brock-
port offers a Masters of Fine Arts in conjunction
with VSW.
The overall goals of the VSW were to create a
bridge between theory and practice, in order to
provide a more critical and useful understanding
of both. Photographic work, so easily reproduced,
was also seen as more democratic than other forms
of art, in terms of its inexpensiveness and accessi-
bility through circulation. Little institutional sup-
port at that time existed either for photographic
criticism or for any kind of photography that was
not strictly high art. Independent film and video
were also fledgling industries and lacked little insti-
tutional support, and so the aims of VSW and
Afterimagewere also to provide institutional sup-
port and a forum for discussion of these media.
Naturally,Afterimagehas since incorporated dis-
cussions and work of digital media as well.
In the 1980s, according to Kester, Afterimage
focused on the identity of the photographer or
writer, at the same time attempting to locate his
or her work in the context of political struggle.
MFA programs in photography were becoming
more widespread, and artists and photographers
were trying to incorporate larger political issues
into their local practices. Cultural diversity
among practitioners was increasing at the same
time the so-called ‘‘culture wars’’ that began in
1989 when grants to fund exhibitions of works by
Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano by theAFTERIMAGE: THE JOURNAL OF MEDIA ARTS AND CULTURAL CRITICISM