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THE
BLACK FEMALE BODY: A Photographic History
By Deborah Willis and Carla Williams,
Temple University Press: 228 pp., $60
Black Is Beautiful
By Paula L. Woods, August 4, 2003, Los Angeles Times
All children have a hunger to see themselves in the world,
and as a black child of the mid-20th century, I was starved
for positive images of African Americans. It wasn't enough
to see them in the flesh--that occurred daily in my largely
segregated neighborhood. I wanted to see them captured in
printed or moving pictures, believing these images bestowed
a certain validity and legitimacy to their existence.
When it came to black women, what little imagery I saw in
the '50s and '60s was confusing. In movies, there was Hattie
McDaniel, who appeared in myriad Mammy-to-maid guises in
films of the '30s and '40s. African Americans' relationship
to McDaniel was complex. She was both harshly reviled (did
white people think we were all like that?) and grudgingly
respected (after all, McDaniel did get paid).
As for print media, black-owned magazines—particularly those
published before the 1970s—presented equally iconic and
simplistic photographs of the saintly mothers of the civil-rights
movement or of saucily clad centerfolds. All of which could
leave a black girl, growing into womanhood bracketed by
the civil rights and women's movements, uncertain of just
who and how to be, especially in relationship to her own
body.
How much easier it would have been for me—and perhaps other
young women of my generation—to have had photo historian
Deborah Willis' and photographer-writer Carla Williams'
"The Black Female Body: A Photographic History"
as a cultural and visual Rosetta stone. For in their exhaustive
culling and pairing of historical and contemporary photos
with insightful commentary, Willis and Williams contend
that "the history of [the black female] image is deeply
rooted in representations of our mostly unclothed bodies."
It is an idea that is revelatory yet implicitly understood
by every black woman who cringes at the gyrations of Lil'
Kim or Tweet on video or has weighed in on the debate surrounding
the sexual mores of Leticia Musgrove, the character portrayed
by Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball." Clothed or
unclothed, Mammy or Lil' Kim, the damage that negative representation
does to the psyche of black women and those who view the
images is immense and subject to heated debate even today.
Fully conscious of the pitfalls of once again "objectifying
black women by re-representing exploitive and derogatory
images" from the past, the authors include the images
with an overarching aim: to reveal how three aesthetic categories—the
naked "National Geographic" or "Jezebel,"
the neutered black female or "mammy," and the
noble savage—intersect and are intertwined throughout our
cultural history.
To achieve their objective, the authors have included in
Part 1, "Colonial Conquest," images as early as
the 1840s taken by photographers who were primarily European
and whose work reflected not only the burgeoning popularity
of the daguerreotype to capture ethnographical and anthropological
"specimens" but also the use of the medium as
a chronicler of popular culture.
Most notable among these early images are the infamous 19th
century "Venus Hottentot," which caused a sensation
in Europe, and several mid-century representations of nude
African women that, while clinical in their composition,
also forced the sitters to strip to the waist or pose completely
nude for the camera's examination. These yield to more salacious
images, including a group portrait of women working in a
brothel, a nude photograph of a disturbingly young girl
taken by the American painter Thomas Eakins and a pornographic
1850s nude study that is in the collection of the J. Paul
Getty Museum.
Were these women exploited? Certainly, contend the authors.
Even when they were paid a pittance for their cooperation,
they had no control over their image. Willis and Williams
make this perfectly clear in assembling text and images
that provide not only a visual but social context to those
who produced, and therefore retained power over, the photographs
and those who were subjected to the process.
The second part of the book, "The Cultural Body,"
considers how representation of black women evolved from
being a photographer's object to the women exerting newly
found power over how they would be portrayed. An early example
is the American abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who kept careful
control of her official mid-19th century photograph at the
same time as the black-woman-as-object photos were being
produced by Europeans.
The authors also include early 20th century entertainer
Josephine Baker and writer Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom
understood the power of their image to shape perceptions
of themselves and their work. As Hurston wrote to photographer
Carl Van Vechten about her photo session: "I love myself
when I am laughing. And then again when I am looking mean
and impressive."
Other photographs that are part of this evolution include
a bracing collection of black women at work, including arguably
the most famous, Gordon Parks' "Washington, D.C., Government
Charwoman (Ella Watson)." Holding a mop and broom,
Watson stands squarely facing the camera, wearing a simple
polka-dotted housedress, the pattern echoed in the Stars
and Stripes behind her.
Black women's relationship to, and control over, their representation
was also part of another cycle of photography that forms
the third part of the book. "The Body Beautiful"
incorporates majestic, compelling pictures of the "New
Negro" combining "black photographers' input and
the sitter's self-image to form critical responses to the
negative image of blacks some 60 years after the abolition
of slavery." Emerging from the works of historically
significant photographers such as James VanDerZee, Prentice
H. Polk and James Latimer Allen as well as contemporary
artists Chester Higgins, Fern Logan, Cynthia Wiggins, Clarissa
Sligh, the late Roland Charles of Los Angeles and the authors
themselves, are images that, while sometimes challenging,
offer a self-defined and controlled black beauty that stands
in stark contrast to the passive and slave-like images of
earlier times.
All of this is not to imply that white photographers were
not without sensitivity in portraying black women, or that
black photographers or sitters were incapable of debasing
their art or themselves. "The Black Female Body"
gives ample examples of both. Yet the overwhelming feeling
one gets while viewing the haunting images and reading the
thoughtful text of this handsome keepsake is how agency
over one's representation can influence self-image and self-esteem
in the broader psychological and sociological realms, not
just when one is in front of the camera. Which is a message
women of all generations and colors can benefit from equally.
Lil' Kims of the world, take note. |
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