Jessica Owens

Photography and White Afrikaner Identity

PhD supervisor: Tamar Garb (primary), Stephanie Schwartz (secondary)

Working title for PhD: Photography and White Afrikaner Identity

A young dark skinned woman with short black hair wearing a white top

This project focuses on photographic representations of white Afrikaner identity, in relation to race, nation and urban development in South Africa during and after apartheid. Building on recent scholarship on the visual culture of white Afrikanerdom, and informed by critical race theory, it seeks to situate the image of the white Afrikaner within a broader signifying system and global network of white nationalisms. My research examines the visual articulation of hegemonic whiteness developed through tropes of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness, racialisation of the “poor white,” and the documentation of urbanising processes in the creation of a dominant minority middle class. 

I engage with the work of documentary photographers such as David Goldblatt, Roger Ballen, and Pieter Hugo, whose controversial reception, fueled by questions around subject position and approach, reveal the inherent contradictions and slippages in articulating and visualising whiteness in South Africa. These works are considered within the context of landscape and social documentary traditions in South Africa and alongside anthropological and ethnographic sources. Earlier photojournalism and documentary works are also considered as important precursors and for their Anglo-American influence, produced in South Africa by photographers such as Constance Stuart Larrabee and Margaret Bourke-White. This project ultimately seeks to question the role of the visual in producing the conditions for racial domination. 

My PhD is fully funded by UCL’s History of Art Departmental Research Studentship.

RPS Profile

Teaching

  • PGTA, BA Dissertations and Long Essays, 2025-2026
     

Awards

  • Departmental Research Studentship, UCL, 2025
  • Chancellor’s Award, Arts Division, U.C. Santa Cruz, 2016
  • Department Honors, History of Art and Visual Culture,U.C. Santa Cruz, 2016
  • Senior Seminar Honors, History of Art and Visual Culture, U.C. Santa Cruz, 2016
  • Patricia and Rowland Rebele Grant, U.C. Santa Cruz, 2015
     

Professional Experience

  • Curatorial Assistant, Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2025) 
     

Qualifications

  • MA, History of Art, UCL, 2023-2024 (Distinction)
  • BA, History of Art and Visual Culture, U.C. Santa Cruz, 2012-2016 (Honors)
  • BA, Art, U.C. Santa Cruz, 2012-2016
     

Contact

Email: jessica.owens.23@ucl.ac.uk