Michelle Dizon & Việt Lê: White Gaze (2nd edition)

September 2019, English, 7 x 10 in, 129 pages, color, offset, softcoverDesign: Sming Sming BooksProduction: Candor Arts This second edition of White Gaze includes a new introduction by Michelle Dizon and an afterword by Việt Lê. Dizon's introductory essay "The Sediment of Whiteness" speaks to the way that National Geographic's images have functioned and continue to function as an assertion of property and ownership, particularly as issues around appropriation and fair use have surfaced since the book's first release. In White Gaze, artist and filmmaker Michelle Dizon works with an archive of National Geographic magazines to explore the mechanics of the "white gaze." Through a process of poetic subtraction, Dizon works with only the language on the original page to write a decolonial counterpoint to a way of imaging the world centered on the West. Her images lay the white gaze bare, unearth a genealogy of a racist visuality, and work in the gap between image and text to write against