Maud Sulter's Image-Making: The Rising of Jeanne Duval 's Ka

Abstract: This essay examines the artwork of Maud Sulter (1960-2008), a Scottish-Ghanaian poet, photographer, and artist who focused on the question of the absence and presence of people of African descent in Europe. She thus became consumed by the figure of Jeanne Duval because her story (or lack thereof) exemplifies the violence of History, of an accounting that silences and erases those deemed unworthy of the power to recount. This article explores how Sulter's multi-media approach to photography brought breath to image.