Explores social documentary photography from the nineteenth century to the present to illuminate the political dimensions of photographs that highlight social injustice. Documentary photography aims to capture the material reality of life. Christopher Carter demonstrates how the creation and display of documentary photographs both invite analysis and raise persistent questions about the political and social causes for the bleak scenes of poverty and distress captured on film.

Christopher Carter is an associate professor and director of composition in the English Department at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy and a past editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. His essays have appeared in College English, JAC, Rhetoric Review, and Works and Days.