Sheyi Bankale (SB): How did the idea for Autograph ABP come about? And what generated the need?

Mark Sealy (MS): Autograph ABP was established in 1988 to address the lack of representation for photographers and artists that were engaging with issues relating to cultural difference, race and representation. Prior to 1988, there was no dedicated organization that specifically addressed cultural diversity and photographic practice. It must be remembered that the 1980s was a highly contested period across the field of representational politics. The organization was born out of a long, sustained cultural lobby on a variety of different artistic fronts which all played an important part in fighting for visibility with the cultural sector for black artists. The locus for the organization lays within the old Greater London Authority and the work that was being done across race relations in the city.

SB: To exist is to differ; what is different with Autograph ABP?

MS: Photography is an extraordinary medium for exploring difference, generating dialogue and engaging diverse audiences, as it easily crosses the boundaries between the gallery and public spaces. Autograph ABP looks to develop projects that work on the social-political body. Projects that challenge preconceived notions concerning the construction of the other and that are not simply located in the binary politics of race. As Professor Stuart Hall has stated in our book Different, for us, “Black is considered to be a political and cultural, not a genetic or biological category.” It’s therefore imperative that photographic history has incredible conservative leanings within its institutional presentations. Autograph ABP aims to open up incisive spaces for critical debate about photographic history, spaces that allow for challenging issues to emerge. We do not subscribe to any uniform cultural perspectives and recognize that difference operates on many complex levels.

SB: Autograph ABP constitutes a key role in cultural identity and human rights played by photography, video art and film in contemporary society as instruments to observe and interpret the changes in today’s world. Will you describe this function of Autograph ABP?

MS: The foundations of Autograph ABP are grounded in identity politics. This political grounding, however, is not fixed. It shifts and slides and these movements create tension. This tension creates a form of cultural energy throughout the projects we develop. Hopefully, this political energy leaves the viewer in a different place, a place that opens up and encourages dialogue. That, in essence, is the work we do. Debates surrounding race and representation have not always been linked to the question of human rights. I believe that issues relating to visual representation are important and fundamental to human rights. Therefore I’m interested in resisting forms of cultural erasure and making that which is seemingly uncomfortable or unseen visible.

SB: This tendency traverses photography in different ways and with different force. Autograph ABP has a unique signature of autonomy that is related to a wider cultural level of convention. How do you evaluate the affinity with the audience?

MS: I think we now have an established practice that when reviewed reveals an organizational corpus that addresses directly the politics of change. The question of audience is a big question and funders are obsessed with value for money. It’s important to recognize how much organizational vanity is actually in operation across our cultural institutions, both big and small. I have always believed that if you put on projects that reflect people’s concerns then they will gravitate towards the work you do. This was certainly the case for the project we curated that examined the Bangladeshi independence movement of 1971. Therefore in my view, there is no one direct audience that we address or cultivate. I reject the idea of an audience development programme. Each project we do is not aimed at an imaginary homogeneous other. It’s the issues and the work that carry the project forward.

SB: How do you select so called marginalized works coming from specific geographical areas that are informative to the public and challenge mainstream curatorial art practices?

MS: Marginality and the centre is a recurring question. In his essay History Begins with Me! written in 1991 for the exhibition catalogue Re-Writing History, Nikos Papastergiadis states, We should always ask, as Gayatri Spivak never fails to remind us, why does the centre want to solicit such histories, what would it do with them, and who can claim to represent such a history? What is the burden of representation that the artist is being asked to carry? How are the cultural reference points being signalled in the work? Is the desire for the very project of rewriting a consequence of an impasse within the discourse of pluralism and liberalism, whereby the incorporation of, for example, an artist from the third world is guaranteed by prior proof that his/her work amounts to no more than an innovation that will revitalize the system? If this were the case, then the contemporary desire for difference is no more than a search for new ‘grounds’ upon which the centre can replay its own narcissistic yearnings for similitude. The challenge for Autograph ABP is not to simply replicate what the centre is doing. Our role is to agitate the centre, and this is not a prescriptive process, it’s also full of contradictions. I prefer a working method that is based on collaboration and dialogue, rather than simply discovery.

SB: Do you try to tell a new social story with each project, or the same story influenced through different eyes?

MS: There is no one story and stories do not function in isolation. Of late there is a recurring theme emerging throughout the work of Autograph ABP. I’m very interested in the way photographers are responding to the erosion of civil liberties and what surfaces out of postcolonial situations. I suppose as someone who has grown up having to negotiate different forms of institutional racism and various glass ceilings, it’s not surprising that I’m interested in state violence.

SB: Is there a desire to draw a line of distinction between the interests of civil liberties and post-colonialism?

MS: No, not all. I think the issues of civil liberties and human rights at this particular moment in time are absolutely critical. We are in incredible conservative times that have people very fearful. There’s a real sense of fear and paranoia out there. I’m interested in the visual construction of both the contemporary and historical construction of threats to society.

SB: How do you correlate the relationship between the image and the context? What is more powerful to you?

MS: What we have to address is the work photographs do. This is of course dependent on the context in which photographs are presented. Our experience of photographs differs depending where and how we experience them. So the key question is really, what work do you want the photographic image to do? This will have a bearing on the context in which you wish to operate.

SB: A kind of ephemeral idea where the way of looking at it might constitute it? Are you suggesting that almost invariably a photograph is a product of our needs?

MS: It’s not that photographs are essentially a product of our needs. It’s the ideology of need, the construction of need that makes photography so compelling.

SB: Still with the pulse of human rights, social change and cultural identity — how does Autograph ABP manage to render the artistic value of photography as a medium? Is this a major factor in the development of Rivington Place?

MS: Artistic and aesthetic value is a very loaded question. People come to understanding works at different points of engagement. This is clearly the case, for example, in the work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode. It’s only been in the last few years that collectors have begun to understand the cultural concerns within his practice and how important his work is. Rivington Place, our shared new home, has enabled us to establish a permanent base. A sense of location is essential if we are to develop as agents for social change. Photography is of course most suited to cultural and political enquiry. Its history is grounded in this work. Unpicking this history is an important part of what Autograph ABP represents.