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Naked Black Women With Clothed Counterparts? Quelle Surprise
New York, 9:52 AM
Thu Dec 10
65 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/19/09
Please post this on livejournal everywhere you can, with two additional caveats (there will be those who need them):
1) "racism" does not refer only to a contrast between "white" and "black" imagery.
2) "artist" does not exclude, but in fact deliberately includes, "writer".
08/19/09
08/19/09
Great post Latoya! You're really on a roll today.
As a minority female photographer I find myself at a loss when confronted with the lack of creativity in fashion spreads. I love shooting the female form and using diverse models of all shapes and sizes. Most of my models are my friends. For me this is interesting and it allows me to connect to women in an unconventional way-because for me it's not sexual it's about something else. All women are beautiful regardless of how they fit into the "fuckability" category.
This image says it all to me. Basically that the "white male gaze" is focused on the exoticism of black women. He's looking from afar, like she's some animal he must hunt and trap [ie: fuck] at least once just to see what it's like. I'm not saying that all white males think a certain way necessarily- but its frustrating that photographs and fashion spreads continue to feed into the idea that black women aren't like other women and therefore aren't as beautiful.
I often wonder if there were more black photographers and magazine editors in the industry would black women be portrayed this way? How boring is it that women have been photographed in the same manner over and over?
08/19/09
08/19/09
Not impossible by the way, just hard. In the first image, had the races been reversed it would speak more of slavery to me (slave watching / helping with dressing and being forced to watch nudity around which she may not be comfortable...). So, the only way it could work would be two black models or two white ones. And The contrast of the skin color is part of what makes the shot lovely....
I think that if I were an editorial photographer I would be very reluctant to use black models, due solely to the added scrutiny whenever a non-white is shown.
08/19/09
No, we don't.
The phrase connotes erasure. I can't imagine you would want a part of yourself - your culture, your heritage, your skin color - erased.
08/19/09
"I think it would be very difficult to produce stunning, cutting edge pieces, using black models without it being racist."
I actually think Italian Vogue's all-black issue had some cutting edge photography that wasn't racist. (Toccara's shoot was over the top and sexually charged, but still had that soft beauty Latoya was talking about.) They also had some that definitely was (I'm thinking of them dressing Sesilee Lopez in leopard.) It's funny that they had to dedicate an entire issue to black models to get it right half of the time.
As a black woman, I find it troubling the idea that my image is "untouchable" because it's so hard to take an interesting picture of me without offending someone. It seems to be that our beauty is so out of the mainstream, that a photographer can't think of a black woman outside of the context of "exotic" or "animalistic" or Africa. Not only is this racist. It's also boring. So ultimately, there needs to be less racist, boring crap and more creativity!
08/19/09
At the same time I don't feel they should be congratulated for using black models at all, and producing racist work. That's not what I intend to say. I just think, living in a society where there is so much history and culture and imagery and ideas attached to race, that producing stunning art that moves past that is hard. I think they should keep working at it.
08/19/09
I don't understand why people immediately think that the best way to handle race is to ignore it.
08/19/09
And probably better than you want to.
08/19/09
The New Critical, or alternately "death of the author/artist," approach to criticizing artistic production incenses me for just this reason. It wants to see art as something coming out of an otherwise hermetically-sealed space, or springing fully-formed from its maker's head--a product of will and imagination alone, if you will, innocent of anything like social context.
08/19/09
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08/19/09
(IMO, of course.)
(And I say that based on the IP issues in addition to those related to the social discourse -- all couched in the unconscious rhetoric of death to the authorial ego for the wider societal good, blah blah -- but as I'm also sure you know, both of those are very long discussions.)
08/19/09
Don't get me started on hip/hop videos. That's an industry where "we" have control and yet the images are no better if not worse.
08/19/09
(Yes, I am picking up on a VERY minor point but I have nothing to add to the excellent commentary above.)
08/19/09
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08/19/09
I also have an easier time differentiating between the models of color and the interchangeable blond-haired, blue-eyed Eastern Bloc girls. Don't forget, even style.com misidentified Anna Selezneva on a recent cover of Vogue.
ANYWAY, my point is.... the fashion industry is racist, and the occasional case of mistaken identity is human.
08/19/09
this sentiment is so problematic. In fact you CAN be racist and accepting of homosexuals. Not that its exactly comparable but I have heard some of the most misogynistic comments from the mouths of gay men.
08/19/09
Cory runs a modeling aency, though. He probably doesn't think he can afford not to be in denial.
08/19/09
08/19/09
This is what bothers me about the representation, in general, of minorities in fashion, media, movies, etc. And I think it comes from the fact that there is no way of appreciating, or even finding, beauty in people who don't look white. It is always defined as "exotic" beauty. "Exotic" because it is bizarre to find beauty in skin that isn't a shade of white, or in features that are not Caucasian, or western, o whatever you wanna call it. And since people don't learn to find beauty in colors or features that don't look familiar, they instead make that beauty different, exotic, unusual, and turn it into a cliché of colonial/imperialistic notions. The beautiful black woman as an "exotic" contrast to what we know as actual beauty (i.e. a white woman), or as part of a tired ideal (there are no cities in Africa, just the Serengeti, where animals run wild. Latin America always looks like a jungle, or maybe a dusty little place with donkeys) We don't attribute beauty, or even sophistication, to "others" so instead we rely on fixed images that reinforce our notions.
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