The Black Female Body: A Photographic History [Hardcover]

Deborah Willis (Author), Carla Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002

Searching for photographic images of black women, Deborah Willis and Carla Williams were startled to find them by the hundreds. In long-forgotten books, in art museums, in European and U.S. archives and private collections, a hidden history of representation awaited discovery. "The Black Female Body" offers a stunning array of familiar and many virtually unknown photographs, showing how photographs reflected and reinforced Western culture's fascination with black women's bodies. In the nineteenth century, black women were rarely subjects for artistic studies but posed before the camera again and again as objects for social scientific investigation and as exotic representatives of faraway lands. South Africans, Nubians, enslaved Abyssinians and Americans, often partially or completely naked and devoid of identity, were displayed for the armchair anthropologist or prurient viewer. Willis and Williams relate these social science photographs and the blatantly pornographic images of this era with those of black women as domestics and as nursemaids for white children in family portraits. As seen through the camera lens, Jezebel and Mammy took the form of real women made available to serve white society. Bringing together some 185 images that span three centuries, the authors offer counterpoints to these exploitive images, as well as testaments to a vibrant culture. Here are nineteenth century portraits of well-dressed and beautifully coifed creoles of color and artistic studies of dignified black women. Here are Harlem Renaissance photographs of entertainer Josephine Baker and writer Zora Neale Hurston. Documenting the long struggle for black civil rights, the authors draw on politically pointed images by noted photographers like Dorothea Lange, Louis Hines, and Gordon Parks. They also feature the work of contemporary artists such as Ming Smith Murray, Renee Cox, Coreen Simpson, Chester Higgins, Joy Gregory, and Catherine Opie, who photograph black women asserting their subjectivity, reclaiming their bodies, and refusing the representations of the past. A remarkable history of the black woman's image, "The Black Female Body" makes an exceptional gift book and keepsake. Deborah Willis is Professor of Photography in the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and the author of "Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present". Carla Williams is a writer and photographer.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Rather than making broad surveys, the current trend in photo-historical research is a more narrow approach, closely examining specific groups. Willis (Reflections in Black) and Williams (The Underground Railroad, etc.) continue on this track. They concentrate not only on images of women but exclusively at the black female form in photographs beginning in the 19th century. Willis and Williams's approach is theoretical, focusing on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social class by looking at images of the objectified black female in a variety of representations. The book is divided into four main chapters "Colonial Conquest," "The Cultural Body," "The Body Beautiful," and "Reclaiming Bodies and Images" and includes over 200 images by important photographers, such James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems, as well as by many unknowns. The book provides a fascinating view into a long-neglected and even taboo subject. Another recent text, Kathleen Thompson's The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present, is similar but focuses on inspirational imagery, and Willis's earlier work Reflections in Black offers a more comprehensive survey of black photography. Still, the current volume is highly recommended for any library interested in expanding its black history, photo history, and women's studies collections. Shauna Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"This publicationocopiously illustrated and rigorously researchedodemonstrates the complexities of deconstructing images of females of African descent within the medium of photography. Deborah Willis and Carla Williams demonstrate how the paradigm of the gaze, the idioms of subjectivity, agency and identity, and the modality of the observer versus the observed falter in the case of black womenoslave/free, gay/straight, worker/bourgeoisieoand mutate when race and economics interface with gender and sexual preference. This invaluable study will be the starting point for future research and will explode the consciousness of practitioner, subject and patron with regard to the politics of imagery." oLowery Stokes Sims, PhD, Director, The Studio Museum in Harlem "Deborah Willis and Carla Williams are uniquely qualified guides to the taboo subject of the black female body. As highly educated black women who are also trained artists they bring an informed and sensitive perspective to a subject that has never before been studied from a historical and aesthetic viewpoint. They have sleuthfully pursued images of black women in collections around the world and have gathered the very best and most important examples into this anthology. As good historians they use the past as a map for the present. We find reproduced and analyzed here examples from the earliest photographs of black women by European photographers of the 1840s, to Edward Weston in California of the 1930s, to Lorna Simpson in New York of the 1990s. It will be a long time before this book is surpassed." oWeston Naef, Curator of Photographs, The J. Paul Getty Museum "A fascinating and complex journey through a heretofore unlit passage of the history of photography. Well-documented for scholarly use but highly readable. Recommended for anyone interested in a broader understanding of the powerful relationship between representation and culture." oKatherine C. Ware, Curator of Photographs, The Philadelphia Museum of Art "The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, with its superlative introductory essay by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, impacts many of our conventional views, and it does so with substantial force. An astonishing collection of previously unfamiliar images, the book compels us to re-imagine much of what we thought we knew about African and African American history and culture." oHenry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University "The Black Female Body: A Photographic History is an invaluable source book for artists and scholars who are interested in how image technologies have shaped our vision of the world and its inhabitants. Some of the photographs in the book are well known while others emerge for public viewing for the first time in decades. Still, the power of this book lies in the editors' efforts to bring all these photographs together and assess the multiple relationships among them. In doing so they have uncovered a racial grammar that runs across genres, continents, and historical periods. This is truly groundbreaking work." oCoco Fusco, Associate Professor School of the Arts, Columbia University "[A] meticulous presentation of old photos...urging a reevaluation of the modes and means by which the iconic figure of the black female body has been constructed." oCamerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566399289
• ISBN-13: 978-1566399289
• Product Dimensions: 12.4 x 9.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,449,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have!, February 23, 2004

By 

A. Hurley (East Palo Alto, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Hardcover)

Deborah Willis and Carla Williams have provided us all with an invaluable resource and powerful window into the history of photographic images of black women. I have spent countless hours with it -- reading, looking, and rereading, sometimes on the verge of tears and sometimes laughing out loud. Willis and Williams take us through the brutal & dehumanizing photographs of Joseph Zealy and the story of Sarah Baartman to black female body builders and Ms. Williams' own autobiographical pieces that draw on the very histories represented in this incredible book. I cannot emphasize enough how important this book is. While we all encounter images of black women every day, we are, as a society, grossly underprepared to interpret and understand these images and how we have been coached to see them. This book fills the gap by addressing the hitherto unexamined, bringing familiar images into "conversation" with the unfamiliar, getting us to look at black women's bodies in new ways, and challenging us to view the subjects of photographs in their contexts. Willis and Williams lay it all out, giving us the tools to understand, for example, how Li'l Kim and Adrian Piper fit into larger histories of representation. And lest anyone think this book is only about histories of oppression and ongoing oppression, Willis and Williams have included some delightful images as well, one of Pearl Bailey on page 105 being particularly surprising (her nails and eyebrows!). The section on "Colonial Conquest" (especially the "Body at Labor") is my favorite because it forces us to engage the material realities undergirding well-known images such as Manet's Olympia. Some of the images in that section made me cringe and think at the same time. This is also an incredibly beautiful book. The quality of the images, paper, and binding are stunning enough to make it a work of art in itself. And the written text is absolutely perfect -- both in terms of tone and content. It's no exaggeration to say that this book had deeply affected my own way of seeing everything from album covers and music videos to newspaper photos. Oh, and this book makes a great gift for moms of any race and age. My mom is in her 50s and white, and we have had incredible conversations about the images in the book. There's something about this book that lends itself to meaningful mother-daughter conversations. It is also clearly a must-have for anyone studying African and African American studies, women's studies, photography, art history, lesbian-gay studies, and media-communication studies. While it might seem expensive, this books is one you will read again and again over the years and is definitely worth the investment. I like it so much that I have given it to several friends and family members.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have for every photo historian, April 30, 2002

By 

Clint Riley (Santa Fe, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Hardcover)

Ms. Williams and Ms. Willis have created a fascinating survey of the black female body in photography. It spans from the early stages of photography in the 1840's through contemporary processes. It provides thoughtful commentary on the role of black female models and performers in the development of the their representation both socially and culturally.

The reproductions are beautiful and provide the viewer with lush images that have been hidden from view for decades. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of photography. Every art historian should read this informative book.