In Our Glory:

Photography and Black Life

' ' hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics.
New York: The New Press; 54-64.
A LWAY s A daddy's girl.I was not surprised that my sister V. became a
lesbian, or that her lovers were always white women Her worship of.
Daddy and her passion for whiteness appeared to affirm a movement
away from black womanhood and, of course, away from thatimage of the -

woman we did not want to become—out mother. The only family photo-
graph V. displays in her house is a picture of our dad, looking young with
a mustache. His dark skin mingling with the shadows in the photograph
.
All of which is highlighted by the white T—shirt he wears.
‘ In this snapshoc he is standing by a pool table. The look on his face
is confident, seductive, cool—a look we rarely saw growing up. I have
no idea who took the picture, only that it pleases me to imagine that
he cared for the person—deeply. There is such boldness, such fierce
openness in the way he faces the camera. This snapshot was taken
before marriage, before us, his seven children, before our presence in
. his life forced him to leave behind the carefree masculine identity this
pose conveys
The fact that my sister V. possesses this image of our dad, one that I
had never seen before, merely affirms their romance, the bond between.
the two of them. They had the dreamed-about closeness between father
and daughter, or so it seemed. Her possession of the snapshot confirms
this, is an acknowledgment that she is allowed to know—yes, even to
possess—that private life he always kept to himself. When we were-chil-
dren, he refused to answer our questions about who he was, how he acted,
what he did and felt before us. It was as though he did not want to
remember or share that part of himself, as though remembering hurt.
Standing before this snapshot, I come closer to the cold, distant, dark
man who is my father, closer than I can ever come in real life. Not
always
able to love him there, I am sure I can love this version of him, the snap
shot. I gave it a title: “in his glory. ”
 IN OUR GLORY: PHOTOGRAPHY AND BLACK LIFE 55]

Snapshot of Veodis Watkins. 1949. Courtesy of bell 1900125. Photographer

unknown.

Before leaving my sister's place, I plead with her to make a copy of this
picture for my birthday. She says she will, but it never comes. For Christ-
mas, then. It‘s on the way. I surmise that my passion for it surprises her,
makes her hesitate. My rival in childhood—she always winning, the pos-
sessor of Dad’s affection—she wonders whether to give that up, whether ,

she is ready to share. She hesitates to give me the man in the snapshot.
After all, had he wanted me to see him this way, “in his glory," he would!
have given me the picture.
My younger sister G. calls. For Christmas, V. has sent her a “horrible
photograph" of Dad. There is outrage in her voice as she says, “It's dis-
gusting. He’s nor even wearing a shirt, just an old white undershirt." G.
keeps repeating, “I don’t know why she has sent this picture to me.” She
has no difficulty promising to give me her copy if mine does nor arrive.
Her lack of interest in the photograph saddens me. When she was the age
our dad is in the picture, she looked just like him. She had his beauty
then, the same shine of glory and pride. Is this the face of herself that she
has forgotten, does not want to be reminded of, because time has taken
such glory away? Unable to fathom how she cannot be drawn to this pic-
ture, I ponder what this image suggests to her that she cannot tolerate: a
 57
56 ART ON MY MIND IN OUR GLORY: PHOTOGRAPHY AND BLACK LIFE

grown black man having a good time, playing a game, having a drink away from home, from a small t0wn to my first big city, I needed
the secu—
maybe, enjoying himself without the company of women. 1 rity of this image. I packed it carefully. I wanted Lovie, cousin Schuyler's
Although my sisters and I look at this snapshot and see the same man, we wife, to see me ”in my glory.” I remember giving her the snapshot for
safekeeping: only, when it was time for me to return home, it
do nor see him in the same way. Our “reading" and experience of this image could not be
found. This was for me a terrible loss, an irreconcilable grief. Gone
is shaped by our relationship with him, with the world of childhood and the was
images that make our lives what they are now. I want to rescue and preserve . the image of myself I could. love. Losing that snapshot, I lost the
proofof
this image of our father, net let it be forgotten. It allows me to understand my worthiness—that I had ever been a bright-eyed child capable ofwon-
him, provides a way for me to know him that makes it possible to love him det—-the proof that there was a ”me of me."
again, despite all the other images, the ones that stand in the way of love. The image in this snapshot has lingered in my mind’s eye for years.
It
)f- Such is the power of the photograph, of the image, that it can give back has lingered there to remind me of the power of snapshots, of the image.
As I slowly complete a book of essays titled Art on My Mind, I think
and take away, that it can bind. This snapshot of Veodis Watkins, Our about
father, sometimes called Ned or Leakey in his younger days, gives me a the place of art in black life, connections between the social construction
space for intimacy between the image and myself, between me and Dad. I of black identity, the impact of race and class, and the presence in black
am captivated, seduced by it, the way other images have caught and held life of an inarticulate but ever-present visual aesthetic governing our
me, embraced me like arms that would not let go. relationship to images, to the process ofimage making. I return to the
snapshot as a starting point to consider the place of the visual in
Struggling in childhood with the image of myself as unworthy of love, black
I could nor see myself beyond all the received images, which simply rein- life— the importance of photography. I a

forced my sense of unworthiness. Those ways of seeing myself came from Cameras gave to black folks, irrespective of class, a means by which
we I.'

yoices of authority. The place where I could see myself, beyond imposed could participate fully in the production of images. Hence it is essential
images, was in the realm of the snapshot. I am most real to myself in that any theoretical discussion of the relationship of black life to the '

snapshotswthere I see an image I can-love. visual, to art making, make photography central. Access and mass appeal
My favorite childhood snapshot, then and now, showed me in costume have historically made photography a powerful location for the construc- I
n

masquerading. Long after it had disappeared, I continued to- long for it: tion of an oppositional black aesthetic. Before racial integration there was
and to grieve. I loved this snapshot of myself because it was the only a counterhege-
a constant struggle on the part of black folks to create
-

image available to me that gave me a sense of presence, of girlhood monic world of images that would Stand as visual resistance, challenging
beauty and capacity for pleasure. It was an image of myself I could gen~ racist images. All colonized and subjugated people who, by way of resis-
uinely like. At that stage of my life I was crazy about Westerns, about tance, create an oppositional subculture within the framework of domi—
cowboys and Indians. The camera captured me in my cowgirl outfit nation recognize that the field of representation (how we see ourselves,
white ruffled blouse, vest, fringed skirt, my one gun and my boots. In this how others see us) is a site of ongoing struggle.
image I became all that I wanted to be in my imagination. The hisrory of black liberation movements in the United States could.
For a moment, suspended in this image: I am'a cowgirl. There is a look be characterized as a struggle over images as much as it has also been a
ofheavenly joy on my face. I grew up needing this image, cherishing it-— Struggle for rights, for equal access. To many reformist black civil rights
my one reminder that there was a precious little girl inside me able to activists, who believed that desegregation would offer the humanizing
know and express joy. I took this photograph with me on a visit to the context that would challenge and change white supremacy, the issue of
house of my father’s cousin Schuyler. representation-mcontrol over images—«was never as important as equal
His was a home where art and the image mattered. No wonder, then As time has progressed and the face ofwhite supremacy has not
access.
that I wanted to share my "best” image. Making my first real journey changed, reformist and radical blacks would likely agree that the field of
 58 ART ON MY MIND 1N OUR GLORY: PHOTOGRAPHY AND BLACK LIFE 59

representation remains a crucial realm of struggle, as important as the means—private or public—*by which an oppositional standpoint could
question of equal access, if not more important. Roger Wilkins empha— be asserted, a mode of seeing different from that of the dominant culture.
sizes this point in his recent essay ”White Out.” Everyday black folks began to see themselves as not having a major role to
In those innocent days, before desegregation had really been tried, playin the production of1mages.
before the New Frontier and the Great Society, many of us blacks To reverse this trend we must begin to talk about the significance of
had lovely, naive hopes for integration . . In our naiveté, we
.
blackimage productionin daily life prior to racial integration. When we
believed that the pOWer to segregate was the greatest power that concentrate on photography, then, we make it possible to see the walls of
had been wielded against us. It turned out that our expectations photographs in black homes as a critical intervention, a disruption of
were wrong. The greatest power turned out to be whatit had always
white control over black images.
been. the power to define reality where blacks are concerned and to
manage perceptions and therefore arrange politics and culture to
Most Southern black folks grew up in a contexr where snapshots and the
reinforce those definitions. more stylized photographs taken by professional photographers were the

easiest images to produce. Displaying these images in everyday life was as

Though our politics differ, Wilkins's observations echo my insistence, in central as making them. The walls of images in Southern black homes were
the opening essay of Black Looks: Race and Representation, that black people have sites of resistance. They constituted private, black—owned and -opetated
made few, if any, revolutionary interventions in the arena of representation. gallery space where images could be displayed, shown to friends and
In part, racial desegregation—equal access—offered a vision of racial strangers. These walls were a space where, in the midst of segregation, the
progress that, however limited, led many black people to be less vigilant hardship of apartheid, dehumanization could be countered. Images could
about the question of representation. Concurrently, contemporary com- be critically considered, subjects positioned according to individual desne.
modification of blackness creates a market context wherein conventional, Growing up inside these walls, many of us did not, at the time, regard
even Stereotypical, modes of representing blackness may receive them as important or valuable. Increasingly, as black folks live in a world so
the
greatest reward. This leads to a cultural context in which images that technologically advanced that it is possible for images to be produced and
would subvert the status quo are harder to produce. There is no "per- reproduced instantly, it is even harder for some of us to emotionally contex-
ceived market” for them. Nor should it surprise us that the erosion of tualize the significance of the camera in black life during the years of racial :

oppositional black subcultures (many of which have been destroyed in apartheid. The sites of contestation were not out there, in the world of white--
the desegregation process) has deprived us of those sites of radical resis- power, they were within segregated black life. Since no "white" galleries dis-
tance where we have had primary control over representation. Signifi- played images of black people created by black folks, spaces had to be made
( cantly, nationalist black freedom movements were often concerned only within diverse black communities. Across class boundaries black folks
l with questions of "good" and‘ bad" imagery and did not promote a more struggled with the issue of representation. This issue was linked with the
I expansive cultural understanding of the politics of representation. Instead issue of documentation; hence the importance of photography. The camera
they promoted notions of essence and identity that ultimately restricted was the central instrument by which blacks could disprove representations
Band confined black image producrion. of us created by white folks. The degrading images of blackness that
No Wonder, then, that racial integration has created a crisis in black '
emerged from racist white imagination and that were circulated widely in
life, signaled by the utter loss of critical vigilancein the arena of1mage the dominant culture (on salt shakers, cookie jars, pancake boxes) could be
making— by our being stuckin endless debate over good and bad countered by ”true—to-life” images. When the psychohistory of a people is
imagery. The aftermath of this crisis has been devastatingin that it has ‘- marked by ongoing loss, when entire hisrories are denied, hidden, erased,
led to a relinquishment of collective black interest in the production
of documentation can become an obsession. The camera must have seemed a
images. Photography began to have less significance in black life as magical instrument to many of the displaced and marginalized groups
a
 60 ART ONMY MIND IN OUR GLORY: PHOTOGRAPHY AND BLACK LIFE 6i

trying to carve out new destinies for themselves in the Americas. More than household could experience this as an enjoyable activity, before any of the
rest of us could be behind the camera. Until then, picture taking
any other image-making tool, the camera offered African—Americans, was
dis-
empowered in white culture, a way to empower ourselves through
represen — serious business. I hated it. I hated posing. I hated cameras. I hated the
tation. For black folks, the camera provided a means to document a reality images that cameras produced. When I stopped living at home, I refused
that could, if necessary, be packed, stored, moved from place to place. It to be captured by anyone's camera. I did not wish to document my life,
was
documentation that could be shared, passed around. And, ultimately, these the changes, the presence of different places, people, and so on. I wanted
to leave no trace. I wanted there to be no walls in my life that would, like
images, the World they recorded, could be hidden, to be discove
red at
another time. Had the camera been there when slavery ended, it could have gigantic maps, that: my journey. Iwanted to stand outSide history. .

provided images that would have helped folks sEarching for lost kin That was twenty years ago. Now that I am passionately involved With
and
loved ones. It would have been a powerful tool of cultural recovery. Half a thinking critically about black people and representation, I can confess
century later, the generations of black folks emerging from a history of loss that those walls of photographs empowered me, and that I feel their
became passionately obsessed with the camera. Elderly black people devel—
absence in my life. Right now I long for those walls, those curatorial
oped a cultural passion for the camera, for the images it produced, because spaces in the home that express our will to make and display images.
it
offered a way to contain memories, to overcome loss, to keep history.
Sarah Oldham, my mother's mother, was a keeper of walls. Through-
Though rarely articulated as such, the camera became in black life a out my childhood, visits to her house were like trips to a gallery or
I political instrument, a way to resist misrepresentation as well as a means museum—«experiences we did not have because of racial segregation. We
by which alternative images could be produced. Photography was
more would stand before the walls of images and learn the importance of the
fascinating to masses of black folks than other forms of image making
arrangement, whya certain photograph was placed here and not there.
because it offered the possibility of immediate intervention,
useful in the The walls were fundamentally different from photo albums. Rather than _

production of counterhegemonic representations even as it was also shutting images away, where they could be seen only upon request, the
an
instrument of pleasure. The camera allowed black folks to combine image
walls were a public announcement of the primacy of the image, the joy of -

making, resistance struggle, and pleasure. Taking pictures was fun! image making. To enter black homes in my childhood was to enterhai
Growing up in the 19505, I was somewhatawed and at times fright- World that valued the visual, that asserted our collective Wlll to paICICle
ened by our extended family's emphasis on picture taking.
From the pate in a noninstitutionalized curatorial process. . . i-

images of the dead as they lay serene, beautiful, and still in open
caskets For black folks constructing our identities within the culture of
to the endless portraits of newborns, every wall and
corner of my grand- apartheid, these walls were essential to the process of decolonization. In
parents' (and most everybody else's) home was lined with photog
raphs. opposition to colonizing socialization, internalized racrsm, these walls
When I was young I never linked this obsession with self-representation announced our visual complexity. We saw ourselves represented in these
to our history as a domestically colonized and subjugated
people. images not as caricatures, cartoonlike figures; we were there in full diver-a
‘ My perspective on picture taking was also informed by the way the sity of body, being, and expression, multidimensional. Reflecting the way
process was tied to patriarchy in our household. Our father was
definitely black folks looked at themselves in those private spaces, where those ways
the “picrure-takin’ man." For a long time cameras remained myster being by white colonizing eye, white-
ious of looking were not overseen a a
and offlimits to the rest of us. As the only one in the family
who had supremacist gaza, these images created ruptures in our experience of the
access to the equipment, who could learn how to‘make
the process work, visual. They challenged both white perceptions of blackne 35 and that realm
my father exerted control over our images. In charge of captur
ing our of black-produced image making that reflected internalized racrsm. Many
family history with the camera, he called and took the shots.
We were of these images demanded that we look at ourselves with new eyes, that we
consrantly being lined up for picture taking, and it was years before
our create oppositional standards of evaluation. As we looked at black skin in
 62 ART ON MY MIND
IN OUR GLORY: PHOTOGRAPHY AND BLACK LIFE 63

snapshots, the techniques for lightening skin that profes

sional photogra- one who will never work for anything, someone who picks up things
phers often used when shooting black images were sudde
nly exposed as a lying on other people's dressers and is not embarrassed when found
colonizing aesthetic. Photographs taken in everyday life, out. It is the face of a sneak who glides over to your sink to rinse the
snapshots in par-
ticular, rebelled against all those photographicvpractices fork you have laid by your place. An inward facewwhatever it sees
that teinscribed
colonial ways of looking and capturing the images of the black is its own self. You are there, it says, because I am looking at you.
"other.”
'

Shot spontaneously, without any norion of remaking black

bodies in the I quote this passage at length because it attests. to a kind of connection
image of whiteness, snapshots posed a challenge to black
viewers. Unlike to photographic images that has not been acknowledged in critical discus-
photographs constructed so that black images would appea
r as the embod— sions of black folks' relationship to the visual. When I first read these sen-
iment of colonizing fantasies, snapshots gave
us a way to see ourselves, a' tences, I was reminded of the passionate way we related to photographs
sense of how we looked when we were not
“wearing the mask,” when we when I was a child. Fictively dramatizing the extent to which a photo-
were not attempting to perfect the image for a white—supremacist gaze.
graph can have a "living presence," Morrison describes the way that many
Altho
ugh most black folks did not articulate their desire to look
at black folks rooted in Southern tradition once used, and still use, pictures.
images of themselves that did not resemble or please
white folks' ideas They were and remain a mediation between the living and the dead.
about us, or that did not frame us within an image
of racial hierarchies, To create a palimpsest of black folks' relation to the visual in segre—
that desire was expressed through our passionate engag
ement with infor- gated black life, we need to follow each trace, not fall into the trap of
mal photographic practices. Creating pictorial genea
logies was the thinking that if something was nor openly discussed, or only talked about
means by which one could ensure against the losses
of the past. Such and not recorded, it lacks significance and meaning. Those pictorial
genealogies were a way to sustain ties. As childr
-

en, we learned who our genealogies that Sarah Oldham, my mother's mother, constructed on her
ancestors were by listening to endless narrat
ives as we stood in front of walls were eSsential to our sense of self and identity as a family. They pro-
these pictures.
vided a necessary narrative, a way for us to enter history without words.
In many black homes, photographs—especially snapshots—
were When words entered, they did so in order to make the images live. Many
also central to the creation of ”altars." These
commemorative places paid older black folks who cherished pictures were nor literate. The images were
homage to absent loved ones. Snapshots or profe
ssional portraits were crucial documentation, there to sustain and affirm memory. This was true"
placed in specific settings so that a relationship
with the dead could be for my grandmorhet, who did not read or write. I focus especially on her
continued. P01 gnantly describing this use of the image
in her novel jazz, walls because I kn0w that, as an artist (she was an excellent quiltmaker),
Toni Morrison writes:
'

She positioned the photos with the same care that she laid out her quilts.

. a dead girl’s face has become a necess

. .

ary thing for their nights.

The walls of pictures were indeed maps guiding us through diverse
They each take turns to throw off the bedcovers, rise journeys. Seeking to recover strands of oppositional worldviews that were
up from the
sagging mattress and tiptoe over cold linoleum into a part of black folks’ historical relationship to the visual, to the process of
the parlor to
gaze at what seems like the only living presen
ce in the house: the image making, many black folks are once again looking to photography
photograph of a bold, unsmiling girl staring from
the mantelpiece. to make the connection. The contemporary African—American artist
If the tiptoer is Joe Trace, driven by loneliness from his wife's
side, Emma Amos maps our journeys when she mixes photographs with paint»
then the face stares at him without hopeor regret
and it is the
absence of accusation that wakes him from his ing, making connections between past and present. Amos uses snapshots
sleep hungry for her
company. No finger points. Her lips don ’t turn inherited from an uncle who once took pictures for a living. In one piece,
down in judgment.
Her face is calm, generous and sweet. But if the tiptoe Amos paints a map of the United States and identifies diasporic African
r is Violet, the
photograph is not that at all. The girl's face looks
greedy, haughty presences, as well as particular Native American communities with black
and very lazy. The cream-at-the—top-of—the-milk
pail face of some- kin, marking each spot with a family image;

E!
64 ART ON MY MIND

Drawing from the past, from those walls of images I grew up with, I
gather snapshots and lay them out to see what narratives the images tell,
what they say without words. I search these images to see if there are
imprints waiting to be seen, recognized, and read. Together, a black male
friend and I lay out the snapshots of his boyhood to see when he began to
lose a certain openness, to discern at what age he began to shut down, to
close himself away. Through these images, my friend hopes to find a way-
back to the self he once was. We are awed by what our snapshots reveal,
what they enable us to remember. i

The word remember (re—memaer) evokes the coming together of severed

parts, fragments becoming a whole. Photography has been, and is, cen-
tral to that aspect of decolonization that: calls us back to the past and
offers a way to reclaim and renew life-affirming bonds. Using images, we
connect ourselves to a recuperative, redemptive memory that enables us
to construct radical identities, images of ourselves that transcend the
limits of the colonizing eye.