Can You Sit for Me?

Ryan Prince’s Can You Sit for Me? is a project that functions on two levels. On the first, it explores Stuart Hall’s theory of the ‘dominant regime of representation’, an idea that describes the mass stereotyping of group of peoples by the media. Prince challenges this regime and the stereotypes it produces by exploring visual alternatives to these hackneyed representations. On the second level, Prince draws on John Byng-Hall’s work on ‘re-editing’ family mythologies, which addresses how false beliefs about the present of a family can be supported by family legends, to consider how families can alter their self-perception. Prince uses his own family to contemplate ideas around how the Black body is seen and represented, what a typology of a modern Black family from London may look like outside stereotypes, how positive imagery challenges racialised gazes and how photography can explore familial ties.