Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography [Paperback]

Deborah Willis-Thomas (Editor), Deborah Willis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eighteen essays by black writers and scholars, in each of which a photograph is used as a springboard from which to address questions of black identity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For this book, Willis invited 18 writers, critics, and filmmakers to select a photograph they found personally or historically significant and to provide an analysis of their selection. The contributors include Adele Alexander, Angela Davis, Kathe Sandler, Slarissa Sligh, bell hooks, and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, and the images they chose include treasured family portraits, a lynching, a stylish woman of the Harlem Renaissance, a famous 19th-century propaganda piece designed to help recently freed slaves from New Orleans, and a daguerreotype portrait of a black child holding a white baby. By chance, the result is a small sampling from each period of African American history since the invention of photography. Willis (VanDerZee: A Photographic History, LJ 11/15/93), who is associated with the Smithsonian Institution's National African American Museum Project, is known for her ground-breaking research and writing on the subject of African American photography. Recommended for photography and African American studies collections.
Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565841069
• ISBN-13: 978-1565841062
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and personal images, February 7, 2001

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (Paperback)

Dr. Willis has done something terrific here. She begins assertively and positively, naming a central problem: the depiction of black "otherness" in historical photographic representation. She loves photography, a medium that has "given me the opportunity to walk through history." She believes in photography - and her understanding of the medium's power and her ability to teach it to maximum effect are at the heart of this successful book.

Eighteen contemporary African American artists, writers, poets, professors, and critics contributed essays. As a jumping-off point, the contributors begin with a photograph of their choosing. There are around fifty photos in this book, one image often leading to another.

In some cases, the stories are easier to come by than the photos. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor writes, "If family stories were photographs, I'd need a small museum to house them, but a shoebox could house all the photos I have of my family." Her amazing grandmother gazes forthrightly at the photographer, but it's the remarkable family stories that are left.

Big themes challenge the reader. Family histories, objective and subjective views of African American culture, suffering and diaspora are, not surprisingly, woven through many of these essays. Some of the photos are well-known; others, not. Contributors chose family photos, and others present personally experienced public images. Robert A. Hill writes on Marcus Garvey, mentioning that through the 1920s there was a huge and important annual parade in Harlem - in which a contemporary newspaper reported that "fifty thousand Negroes of all ranks and stations in life and from every part of the globe - there were princes, high officials of various governments, [...] were in the line of march." (p. 190). Angela Davis regards her own image on 1970 "Wanted" poster. There are daguerreotypes, news photography, and portraiture. In some cases, the absence of photos - and of visual evidence - is the compelling theme.

St. Clair Bourne analyzes African American images in film, including the (cinematic) birth of stereotypes. A gorgeous and confident man exuding "carefree masculine identity," bell hooks' young father before he became a father, is the introductory image in her absorbing essay. E. Ethelbert Miller's "In My Father's House There Were No Images," is sad and disturbing. Disarmingly, he writes, "When you are the baby of the family, seldom do you know what is going on around you," and then proceeds to show that he knew very, very much. His story is compassionate, brilliant and wise. Carla Williams' "The Erotic Image is Naked and Dark," begins with a French daguerreotype from the 1850's in order to discuss physicality and representations of sexuality. Jacquie Jones writes about a photo of a 1930's lynching that as an eleventh grader she spotted in her (integrated) high school textbook "reproduced carelessly in the tome, added as an afterthought to whatever the text was (...)" recording for us the awful moment in which she, in fact, understood the 'banality of evil.' The image, she guesses, was not so unsettling to the white world - and, worse, that the spectators in the photo were, in all likelihood, still very much alive. Jones' deconstruction of her experiences of "intense, personal racism" is at the heart of her essay.

There are contributors' notes at the end, and detailed captions for each photograph. A great and beautiful book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Truth Is Found In Our Own Backyard, May 19, 2001

By 

J. Koskinen (Kansas City, MO United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (Paperback)

Here's a book of essays that not only reminds us of the dignity to be found in our history as African-Americans, but shows us where to look for them. No longer are we limited to searching for our "roots" through the eyes of "other"; no longer do we have to find "Self" through the acknowledgement of those who have only managed a glimpse at the rich heritage that is African-Americanism. There is something wonderful happening with the emergence of these texts. We are finally learning to love ourselves, which has been the one ingredient lacking in our search for self-worth. This book is a must-read for African-Americans who have yet to learn that our uniqueness is a product of our upbringing, our families and their values and traditions. We are not lost between the pages of some historical text that suggest we are the "disenfranchised." We can finally see ourselves as we truly are - proud and honorable contributors to this nation, complete with a historical and familial past that go beyond the traditional references normally attributed to us. This book is a truly informative edition to any collection.