Autograph ABP presents two major photographic exhibitions: Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), a retrospective of his seminal photographs exploring complex notions of sexuality and cultural dislocation; and Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, a visual
testament to lynching as a form of social violence in the United States of America from 1880 to the 1960s. The exhibitions are linked through photography's relationship to historical and contemporary representations of the black body as a site of spectacle.

The photographs, postcards and memorabilia featured in the exhibition Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America are shown in the UK for the first time. Taken at various lynching events, they were not confined to any one period, place, or race. They collectively reveal how deeply ingrained racist ideologies had become, to the extent that by the early 1900s lynching was transformed into a major participatory form of entertainment and through photography into a space of commercial exchange and celebration.
These photographs uncover a horrific American visual legacy, one that has often been left hidden, but which collector James Allen uncovered: ‘I believe the photographer was more than a perceptive spectator at lynchings. The photographic art played as significant a role in the ritual as torture or souvenir grabbing - a sort of two-dimensional biblical swine, a receptacle for a collective sinful self. Even dead, the victims were without sanctuary.'

The photograph published here is a detail from the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana.