The Black Female Body: A Photographic History

 by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams

Temple University Press, February 2002

cover

I have uploaded a flyer for the book for anyone who would like to help us by printing it out and distributing it in your local bookstores, schools, beauty shops—wherever! There are low resolution 385KB and high resolution 5.3 MB versions.

Reviews/Articles/Blurbs:

  Africana.com : The Top Ten 2002 Books You Should Have Read (Or Lied and Said You Did) by Zakia Munirah Carter
  "Taking back the camera" by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw
  Black Issues Book Review : The Best of 2002
  SF Camerawork 29:2 : Fall/Winter 2002 : Review by Marisa S. Olson
  International Review of African American Art 18:3 : "Visual Histories and Healing" Review by Curtia James
  Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 18 : Fall 2002 : Review by Andy Steiner
  QBR (The Black Book Review Online) January/February 2002 : Review by Ave Maria Cross
  Los Angeles Times : "Black is Beautiful" Review by Paula Woods
  Frontiers Magazine : August 16, 2002 : Review by Harry Eugene Baldwin
  Crisis Magazine 109/3 : May/June 2002 : "Body Conscious" Review by Victoria Valentine
  About Books Review by Tee A. Corinne
  BET online : Taking a Different Look at "The Black Female Body" (also "Body Images, Then and Now" at SeeingBlack.com) Review by Esther Iverem
  Afterimage : Review by Stephanie Dinkins
  New York Arts Magazine : Conquest and Opposition: Visual Authority by Horace Brockington (who never manages to correctly acknowledge my name)
  The Philadelphia Sunday Sun : March 31, 2002 : "New book celebrates over 100 years of the African American female form" by Gloria Blakely
  Nia Online : Just in Time for Women's History Month: The Black Female Body
  Black Boston Online : Review
  Philadelphia Inquirer : "For Love of the Body" by Annette John-Hall
  Philadelphia Daily News : Images of Black Women
  Washington Post : March 1, 2002: "Taking the Broader View Of Beauty" by Donna Britt
  Black Issues Book Review : "Eye" Review by Regina Woods
  Playboy March 2002 : "Magnificent Obsessions" by Helen Frangoulis
  Out March 2002 : "From Mammy to Goddess" by Jolyon Helterman
  Ebony April 2002

  Savoy March 2001 : "THe Black Female Body in Photography"


Interviews:

  Tavis Smiley Show (Deborah Willis only)
  Radio Times (2.22.02)

Awards:

The Black Female Body, by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, published by Temple University Press this spring[2002], has received a Bronze Award from The National Gold Ink Awards, "North America's most prestigious print competition," according to the sponsors.

Criteria for award-winning pieces include the quality of printing, technical difficulty, and overall visual effectiveness. National Gold Ink Awards are presented annually by PrintMedia and Printing Impressions magazines, in association with Rochester Institute of Technology. This year the competition attracted nearly 1,800 entries.

The Black Female Body was designed by Anne O'Donnell of Collingswood, NJ, and printed by Friesens Inc. of Altona, Manitoba, Canada, under the supervision of Charles Ault, production director for Temple University Press. Robin West of Haddonfield, NJ, designed the dust jacket.

The Gold Ink Awards reception and banquet was held at McCormick Place in Chicago on October 7, 2002. The book was featured along with other award winners in the special Gold Ink issue of PrintMedia published in October 2002.



  Related article: Images of the Black Female Body Reflect and Affect Society's Opinion

      

ABSTRACT


This book is the first comprehensive study devoted to the photographic image of the black female body. The historical gaze has profoundly determined the visual construction of black women in contemporary society. The interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-presentation and imposed representation, is fundamental to this discussion. This book will bring together contemporary art and its antecedents, with more than 200 illustrations from public and private collections around the world ranging from the earliest known photographic portraits made in Africa in the early 1850s, to little-known 1930s studies by acknowledged master Edward Weston, to work by contemporary artists and masters including Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems. The images are presented thematically in order to draw parallels and make comparisons across the decades through categories of representation, which include: the naked black female, alternately the "National Geographic " or "Jezebel" aesthetic; the neutered black female, or "mammy " aesthetic; and the noble black female, a descendant of the "noble savage."

Photographic images of black women in the nineteenth century are few. In Western visual art, the image of the black female has traditionally been marginal. Her representation has always been heavily governed by prevailing attitudes toward race, gender, and sexuality. In Europe in the nineteenth century, the body of the black female symbolized three themes: colonialism, scientific evolution, and sexuality, and her representation in art and photography followed along these prescribed lines. A number of significant developments in Western culture coincided with the invention of photography and further contributed to the way in which black females were regarded and ultimately visualized. The births of "popular culture" and modern visual pornography; the development of the natural sciences and the related disciplines of ethnology and anthropology; and the abolition of slavery both in the colonies and at home were practically simultaneous, and each served to compartmentalize, objectify, and categorize any manifestations of difference from the European ideal.

Among the twentieth-century movements discussed through the images are the "New Negro" period, thus defined by professor and philosopher Alain Locke in 1925, which marked the first time that black photographers working in rural and urban communities took control of their self-representation. Black women for the first time also became commercial customers as well as artistic subjects. The "New Negro" image replaced the stereotypes of blacks as unintelligent, ignorant, and lacking a work ethic. Black photographers in the 1960s and 1970s organized exhibitions on black art, exploring the beauty of blacks and black heritage. Black photographers framed their photographs, especially the image of the black female nude, with a sense of pride in African ancestry informed by sexual desire and racial identity.

Since the mid-1970s, black women photographers have used self-portraiture to understand themselves in contemporary society. Some write an autobiography of the body, using their own likenesses and those of other black women. Issues are those closest to the artist: home, family, representation, and identity. Gender consciousness resonates throughout, as do social issues as seen and experienced by these women, who are observers/participants as well as image-makers/interpreters. This volume will place their work in its historical context by presenting it alongside famous and little-known photographic works by both anonymous and celebrated makers, and through a discussion of the artists' intentions, the subjects' agency, and the interpretation of subsequent generations.

      

Below are lists of makers whose images are reproduced in this volume, and the public and private collections that granted permission for the use of the images.

Click here for the complete list of illustrations.


Abdullah Frères (Turkish, active 1870s)
Harry Adams (American, dates unknown)
Ajamu(Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba) (British, b. 1963)
James Latimer Allen (American, 1907 - 1977)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002)
Eugène Atget (French, 1857 - 1927)

Barnett (South African, active 1890s)
Ernest Benecke (French, born Germany, active 1851-8)
Allison Bolah (Canadian, b. 1975)
Prince Roland Bonaparte (French, 1858-1924)

Antônio da Silva Lopes Cardozo
Roland Charles (American, 1941-2000)
Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay (French, 1828 - 1915)
Albert Chong (Jamaican, b. 1958)
Christiano Jr. (Argentinean, active 1870s)
James Connelly (American, active 1930s)
Renée Cox (American, b. 1958)
Edward S. Curtis (American, 1868 - 1952)

Baron Adolphe de Meyer (American, 1868 - 1949)
Elise Fitte Duval (Martinican, b. 1967)

Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 - 1916)
Thomas Easterly (American, 1809 - 1882)
Angèle Etoundi Essamba (Cameroonian, b. 1962)
Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975)

Kianga Ford (American, b. 1973)

Gibson, Chicago (American, active 1890s)
Greg Gorman (American, b. 1949)
Joy Gregory (British, b. 1959)
John Gutmann (American, 1905 - 1998)

Johan Hagemeyer (American, 1884 - 1962)
Lyle Ashton Harris (American, b. 1965)
Chester Higgins (American, b. 1946)
Lewis Hine (American, 1874 - 1940)
Rufus Holsinger (American, 1866 - 1935)

Allen Jackson (American, b. 1961)

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894 - 1978)
Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852 - 1924)
Seydou Keïta (Malian, b. 1923)
Roshini Kempadoo (British, b. 1959)
Keba Konte (American, b. 1966)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi (American, 1893 - 1953)

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895 - 1965)
Constance Stuart Larrabee (British, 1914-2000)
Lynn Marshall Linnemeier (American, b. 1954)
Harlee Little (American, b. 1947)
Fern Logan (American, b. 1945)

Édouard Manet (French, 1832 - 1883)
Stephen Marc (American, b. 1954)
John Mosley (American, 1907 - 1969)
Jacques Antoine Félix Moulin (French, ca. 1802 - after 1869)
Ming Smith Murray (American, active 1970s to the present)

Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820 - 1910)
Attributed to Luigi Naretti (Italian, active 1880s-1920s, d. 1922)
Carlo Naya (Italian, 1816 - 1882) & Otto Schoefft (Austrian, active 1860s - 1890s)
New Orleans Police Department

David "Oggi" Ogburn (American, b. 1942)
Lorraine O'Grady (American, b. 1940)
Catherine Opie (American, b. 1961)
Paul Outerbridge (1896 - 1958)

Gordon Parks (American, b. 1912)
Rosana Paulino (Brazilian, b. 1967)
Joseph Pennell (American, 1866 - 1922)
Edgar Eugene Phipps (1887 - 19??)
Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948)
Prentice Herman Polk (American, 1898-1984)
Philippe-Jacques Potteau (French, 1807 - 1876)

Randall (active Detroit, Michigan, 1860s)
Richard Samuel Roberts (American, 1907 - 1936)
Louis Rousseau (French, 1788 - 1868)

Geoffroy Saint Hilaire (French, 1772 - 1844) and Frédéric Cuvier (French, 1772 - 1838)
Coreen Simpson (American, b. 1942)
Lorna Simpson (American, b. 1960)
Aaron Siskind (American, 1903 - 1991)
Clarissa Sligh (American, b. 1939)

Beuford Smith (American, b. 1939)
Gordon Smith (American, b. 1950)
Edward Steichen (American, 1879 - 1973)
Thomas Stothard (British, 1755 - 1834)

E. Thiesson (French, active 1840s)
Oliviero Toscani (Italian, b. 1942)
Pierre Trémaux (French, 1818 - 1895)

Doris Ulmann (American, 1882 - 1934)

James VanDerZee (American, 1886-1983)
Carl Van Vechten (American, 1880-1964)

Waléry, Paris (active 1880s - 1920s)
Maxine Walker (British, b. 1962)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987)
Edward Weston (American, 1886 - 1958)
Cynthia Wiggins (American, active 1980s - present)
Carla Williams (American, b. 1965)
Charles Williams (American, dates unknown)
Pat Ward Williams (American, b. 1948)
Deborah Willis (American, b. 1948)
Henry Wyman and Henry A. Strohmeyer (American, active 1890s)

Joseph T. Zealy (American, 1812 - 1893)
Charles C. Zoller (American, 1854 - 1934)

      

Collections


Getty Research Institute
Bibliothèque centrale M.N.H.N. Paris
George Eastman House
The Wilson Center for Photography
The J. Paul Getty Museum
The Manfred Heiting Collection
Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Peabody Museum, Harvard University
Eileen and Peter Norton Collection
Musée d'Orsay
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries
New Orleans Museum of Art
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Richard Merkin Collection
The Uwe Scheid Collection
Coll. Nicolas Monti/Monas Hierogliphica
New Orleans Public Library
Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries
Center for Creative Photography
National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris
University Art Museum, University of New Mexico
Chicago Historical Society
Library of Congress
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Regen Projects
Estate of Richard Samuel Roberts
Ex Libris Ltda.
Sean Kelly Gallery
Amon Carter Museum
Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS
Benetton Group
Paul R. Jones Collection, Atlanta
Missouri Historical Society
Arquivo Nacional (Brasil)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Archives
Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University
Beuford Smith/Césaire Photos
black gallery/Black Photographer of CA, Inc. Archives
Black Star
Brooklyn Museum of Art



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