How can an image change the world?

When Aylan Kurdi’s body was discovered washed up on a beach in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum in 2015, photographer Nilufer Demir was present to capture the tragedy with her camera. The subsequent, haunting image – depicting the lifeless three-year-old Syrian boy face down in the surf – came to visually embody the entire, colossal horror of the refugee crisis. It was used on front pages, referred to in speeches and explicitly cited in international policy. without using a single word, Demir’s image had transformed the global debate on immigration, magnifying the very real fact that refugees were sentiment, grievable human beings, as opposed to numbers, statistics or emotively vacant data.

Propagated images and social change have found themselves firmly entangled for hundreds of years. In 1863, during the American Civil War, abolitionists photographed, mass-produced and circulated the whip-scarred back of “Gordon”, a man from Mississippi who escaped slavery. Upon reception, it provoked outcry, operating as a damningly visceral indictment of slavery and becoming a staple reference in the abolitionist case in the process. Likewise, between 1908 and 1912, Lewis Hine used his camera as an active tool for social amendment, taking thousands of photos of child labourers in America that shook the country to the point of direct legislative reform. Fast-forward to the present day, however, and this enmeshment is slightly more problematic. Due to transformations on social, cultural and technological scales, the traditional assumption of the process – in which photos were taken, circulated and engaged with, thereupon leading to consequent activism – has now become multifaceted and complex.

This idea is one of several within visual culture’s rich, eclectic history currently being considered in the International Center of Photography’s Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change. It’s the collective effort of eight curators and organisers, which explores how advances in technology allow for social change to be both reported and produced, as well as the long-standing historic impact of visual culture and the new challenges and cultural terrains that the contemporary digital world provides.

“We generally think of social change photography as moving something from a bad place to a good place. Or, another way to put it, would be to achieve a good end utilising photography,” explains Carol Squiers, one of the exhibition’s curators. “But the thing that has happened with the web and with the possibility of network, images and information, is that now any actor can try to affect social change using these different platforms that are on the web – and the change, arguably, is not always good.

“The way the show was planned was that we decided to look at five or six issues that were amongst the most pressing issues of the day, as far as we could tell.”

“The thing that has happened with the web and with the possibility of network, images and information, is that now any actor can try to affect social change using these different platforms that are on the web – and the change, arguably, is not always good” – Carol Squiers, curator, Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change

These issues are explored in six, separate sections, titled: “The Fluidity of Gender”, “Climate Changes”, “ISIS and the Terror of Images”, “Black Lives (Have Always) Mattered”, “The Flood: Refugees and Representation” and “The Right-Wing Fringe and the 2016 Election”. Each of the aforementioned carries with it a unique interaction with image production, display and distribution, all while demonstrating on how such functions find themselves operating in the contemporary, online world.

In some cases, the unprecedented possibility of visual culture’s role in social change in the digital era is almost solely positive. For #BlackLivesMatter, digitally circulated imagery was one of the foremost enabling factors that took the movement from social media to the streets; much like Gordon’s scourged back, self-shot videos of police brutality became the catalysts for real-life activism, while images of Ferguson performed a role mirroring that of Birmingham and Selma in the 60s.

Similarly, for trans and queer communities, the online world became an extroverted visually-led community for celebration and empowerment – take Mykki Blanco’s recital of Zoe Leonard’s I Want A Dyke For President for Dazed Digital, for instance. “One of the most important things that has surfaced from this movement is these truly intersectional voices that have kind of been getting it from all sides. To hear that text (I Want A Dyke For President) being repeated by a non-conforming person really centres them at the heart of what this movement about,” says Quito Ziegler, who helped oversee the Gender Fluidity section. “The way that history and been written and the way history has been told has not perpetuated our stories in these officially recorded ways. We’ve always had to do that ourselves. Combating historical erasure is, to me, one of the most crucial functions the internet has enabled us to do as a community.”

But, for every time the online world helps continue image culture’s traditional role in the promotion of positive social progress, there’s the potential for a nefarious equivalent.

“There's a different visual fight playing out now. I feel that every issue has to be very aware of that. The exhibition isn't just celebratory – it presents the very dark side of the possibilities for online revolution,” claims Cynthia Young, co-curator alongside Squiers. “It's relatively new, in a way. The history of concerned photography, really, was one-sided, it was always about progressive positive change and fighting something very large.

“Now, the other side – the oppositional side in any given topic – is much more sophisticated. You look at the Isis videos, they're taking visual clues and visual techniques and editing and montaging right from documentary videos seen on mainstream media.”

Islamic State’s embracing – and successfully executed implementation – of hi-tech visually-led strategy mirrors that of the ‘Alt-Right’ during the 2016 presidential election, as well as oppositional movements to climate change and pro-refugee policy. The other side is no longer lagging behind in terms of cultural and visual literacy; now, the progressives do not have the upper hand when it comes to using imagery to promote transformative agenda – it’s an equal playing field.

For every Mykki Blanco video, there’s a Pepe the Frog meme; for every Aylan Kurdi front page, there was one of Nigel Farage’s ‘Breaking Point’ posters. The potential that the digital world provides for creativity, reach and engagement applies to both sides. Once upon a time, the mention of “image culture” and “social change” in the same sentence would have inspired thoughts exclusively of Hine and Capa, whereas now, it accommodates just as inclusively those who wish to use visual conversation to lead society in a very different kind of direction.

The potential for positive, progressive activism is richer than ever, but it’s now become part of a dichotomised balancing act. In the digital age, image culture is a tool for everyone – it can hinder just as much as it helps.

The International Center of Photography’s Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change will run until 7 May 2017