Visual content analysis of the afterimages of atrocity

This research examined and critiqued selected afterimages of African atrocities, namely, apartheid (1948-1994), the Rwandan Genocide (1994) and the Democratic Republic of Congo Wars (1998-2003) through a Black gaze. The study is qualitative and utilised Visual Content Analysis and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to render an Africanfurturist, Postcolonial African Trauma reading of the works of Colin Richards, Judith Mason, Rafiki Ubaldo, Richard Mosse and WITNESS (documentary), selected using judgmental sampling. The data was collected using both primary and secondary data in the public domain related to all aspects of the research project. This study used visual content analysis for manifest analysis, literature review and to establish the artworks' historical and social context. MCDA was used to analyse latent aspects of the artworks such as the creating artist's ideological perspectives. Artists who are deemed cultural outsiders are unfamiliar with Black African values, cultural processes, or mourning practices and they therefore risk undermining the trauma (physical and psychological) inflicted upon Black African bodies by prolonged racial and cultural subjugation. Imaginative and/or pornographic visual approaches to such trauma are suspect because they are ethically and historically irresponsible.