CiNii Books - Picturing us : African American identity in photography

Winner of the International Center for Photography’s 1995 Award for Writing on Photography, Picturing Us brings together a diverse group of African American writers, scholars, and filmmakers in the first concerted effort to analyze and respond to the photographic images of blacks through history. The book’s contributors—including bell hooks, E. Ethelbert Miller, Angela Davis, and others—examine the personal and public issues embedded in family portraits and news photographs, movie stills and mug shots.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Visual memories: when you meet Estella Smart, you been met!, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
a Sunday portrait, Edward P. Jones
in our glory - photography and black life, bell hooks
in my father's house there were no images, E. Ethelbert Miller. Part 2 Reflecting colour: gazing coloured - a family album, Christian Walker
grandmother's face and the legacy of Pomegranate Hall, Adele Logan Alexander
my grandmother died last night, Lise Hamiton. Part 3 Reinterpreting visual memories: the plaintiff speaks, Clarissa T. Sligh
finding a space for myself in my film about colour conscousness, Kathe Sandler
affirmative action and the white backlash - notes from a child of Apartheid, Luke Charles Harris. Part 4 Personal and cultural images in a critical context: the erotic image is naked and dark, Carla Williams
mug shot - suspicious person, Claudine K. Brown
the continuing drama of African American images in American cinema, St Clair Bourne
how come nobody told me about the lynching?, Jacquie Jones
hard core poverty, Paul A. Rogers
Afro images - politics, fashion, and nostalgia, Angela Y. Davis
making noise - Marcus Garvey Dada, August 1922, Robert A. Hill.

Volume: ISBN 9781565841079

Description

Deborah Willis, an expert on African American photography asks 18 writers, critics and film makers each to select a photograph of personal or historical significance and to "read" it for insights into the black experience. While some of the contributors write about family portraits - for instance, bell hooks and E. Ethelbert Miller write about their fathers - others have selected photographs of a more public and political nature - Jacquie Jones talks about lynchings, while Robert Hill analyzes the infamous picture of Marcus Garvey in a procession. The photographs and essays in this collection take the reader from the "great black migration" to the Harlem Renaissance, from southern lynchings to northern integration, from musings about black female subjectivity in art to the objectification of the black male in the whilte American psyche. Even the analysis of family portraits convey a broad sense of African American history. So a picture in which family members are arranged lightest to darkest repreestnts more than happenstance: it exposes how gradations of colour have divided the black community since slavery. Contributors include Adele Alexander, St Clair Bourne, Claudine Brown, Angela Davis, Vertamae Grosvenor, Lise Hamilton, Luke Charles Harris, Robert Hill, bell hooks, Edward P. Jones, Jacquie Jones, E. Ethelbert Miller, Paul Rogers, Kathe Sandler, Clarissa Sligh, Christian Walker and Carla Williams.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Visual memories: when you meet Estella Smart, you been met!, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
a Sunday portrait, Edward P. Jones
in our glory - photography and black life, bell hooks
in my father's house there were no images, E. Ethelbert Miller. Part 2 Reflecting colour: gazing coloured - a family album, Christian Walker
grandmother's face and the legacy of Pomegranate Hall, Adele Logan Alexander
my grandmother died last night, Lise Hamiton. Part 3 Reinterpreting visual memories: the plaintiff speaks, Clarissa T. Sligh
finding a space for myself in my film about colour conscousness, Kathe Sandler
affirmative action and the white backlash - notes from a child of Apartheid, Luke Charles Harris. Part 4 Personal and cultural images in a critical context: the erotic image is naked and dark, Carla Williams
mug shot - suspicious person, Claudine K. Brown
the continuing drama of African American images in American cinema, St Clair Bourne
how come nobody told me about the lynching?, Jacquie Jones
hard core poverty, Paul A. Rogers
Afro images - politics, fashion, and nostalgia, Angela Y. Davis
making noise - Marcus Garvey Dada, August 1922, Robert A. Hill.

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Picturing us : African American identity in photography

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