Picturing Citizenship

For many, the conditions and privileges of citizenship, and the access it provides to equal civil, political and social rights, are taken for granted.

Yet citizenship always implies histories of inclusion and exclusion. In settler nations with colonial roots, the history of citizenship is entangled with the legacies of colonisation. Looking beyond its legal definition to the wider historical processes through which citizenship and its associated ideas of rights and belonging have been imagined, debated and found lasting form, this collection considers the unique role of visual culture in defining, contesting and advancing ideas of citizenship in settler national contexts from the 19th century to the present day.

Addressing citizenship’s particular entanglements with colonial histories in contemporary settler nations, the collection examines how images have shaped the meanings and experiences of citizenship from the colonial era, through periods of mass global migration, to contemporary geopolitical change and debates on Indigenous rights and recognition. Contributors explore the role visual culture has played in imagining or interrogating ideas about belonging, rights, civic identity, and the ideal citizen in societies that continue to grapple with their settler colonial origins.

They ask how image-making may be used to negotiate or contest the limits of citizenship, whether as a legal or as an imagined cultural category, and the role of visual culture in building relationships between citizens, non-citizens and the state. This collection provides a new and compelling history of citizenship and the ways it has been defined, not only by historicising citizenship’s visual imagery but by exploring its present effects and legacies.

Picturing Citizenship offers an insightful perspective on the interplay between visual culture and the development of citizenship concepts in settler nations.