Vincent Brown is Professor of American History and Professor of African and African-American. Studies at Harvard University, and the co-founder of Timestamp Media. He is producer, writer and presenter of the PBS web series The Bigger Picture, which seeks to challenge common assumptions about iconic American photographs.
A screening of three episodes of the web series was followed by Prof. Brown in conversation with Dr Libby Saxton (QMUL, No Power Without an Image: Icons Between Photography and Film (2020), Professor Jeremy Hicks (QMUL, The Victory Banner: Cinema, Ritual and Repetition in Russia's Memory of World War Two (2020) and Dr Guy Westwell (QMUL, Parallel Lines: Post-9/11 American Cinema, 2014). Prof. Brown was invited to reflect on his experience of making the web series and the central role of iconic images in shaping cultural memory, especially as this relates to questions of race.