Sarah Lewis on “Aesthetic Force” as a Path Toward Justice

Historian and author Sarah Lewis, the founder of the Vision & Justice initiative and an associate professor of the humanities and African and African-American studies at Harvard, discusses the tension between pedagogy and propaganda; the deep influence of Frederick Douglass’s 1861 “Pictures and Progress” lecture on her work; how a near-death car crash altered the course of her life and her new book, “The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America”; and the special ability of certain photographs to stop time.