What Does Sculpture Do? From Photographs to Statues: Remediating Memory and Remedying the Past

Abstract

In Birmingham, AL, Dallas, TX, Greensboro, NC, and Clinton, TN, sculptures erected to mark some of the major moments of the Civil Rights movement share one common point: they were based on photographs taken in 1956, 1960 and 1963, without being perfect replicas of the images from which they were created. How photographed scenes became monuments celebrating the courage and the determination of individuals lifted to the ranks of heroes is at the center of this article. Whether the original photograph was shot during a protest march or a walk to school, during a sit-in, or staged in a bus, the transformation from printed image to sculpture offers the opportunity for figures such as the Greensboro Four and the Clinton Twelve to rise from the relative obscurity that the long shadow of Rosa Parks has cast over the Movement, and for them to become a vital part of the Civil Rights memorial landscape. For each of the examples analyzed, the process of remediation permits the study of the symbolic shift that took place when the siting of the monument in the urban space replaced the background of the photograph.