The Camera as a Weapon: Photography in the Black Community

Written By Izzy Torkornoo

Student Ambassador Weekly Update: This week when considering the topic of my blog post, I re-considered a list of ideas that we had compiled in one of our previous student ambassador weekly meetings. I felt compelled to begin researching the importance of photography in the Black community. I recently wrote a paper for a class about the incredible artwork of Andre D. Wagner that showcases the strength, love and versatility present within New York City’s Black communities. The search terms that I used within the archive were: “Photography,” “Dawoud Bey”, “Deborah Willis,” and “Gordon Parks”.

HistoryMaker Carrie Mae Weems (1953-) is a very decorated photographer and artist in American history. I studied the work of HistoryMaker Weems in my African-American Art History class and we discussed her “Kitchen Table” series. It was really insightful to learn more about the role that photography has played in Ms. Weems’ life. As she informs., “I love photography, and I immediately… had a sense of what I could do with it, a sense of what it could be. Of how you could really craft and create something. And the first thing that I wanted to do is to make important pictures of black people. Because the photographs that I had seen of black people had been so awful and so stereotypic, and so derogatory for the most part. That I thought that was the first thing I needed to deal with let me deal with the way in which black people are represented. Let me try to give something… true and dynamic. You know, that really talked about the shape of the life of a culture of people you know that had to do with them.”[1] She had so much intention and purpose for her photography: to re-shape how the dynamics of Black life are displayed. Speaking to the interconnectedness of photography in her life Ms. Weems presents, “It's a part of all of that it's not separate from all of that and my life, and my work there is no separation really between these two things. It is, it's all one thing, you know. I don't like, you know live for life or live for art I just live. You know, and the art is a part of, a part of how I live.”[2] She continues, ““I think I am the black experience. I think that that's what I'm saying when I say that there is no separation between my life and my work… it's all… the same thing. And I use myself to stand in for far more than just me.”[3]

HistoryMaker Weems also points to places and people that shaped the culture of photography in New York City when she describes the notable people present at the Studio Museum in Harlem, “my first encounter with Roy, and [HistoryMaker] Dawoud Bey was teaching there and Frank Stewart was teaching there. And I started taking classes with, with Dawoud. I started classes with Frank Stewart and then Dawoud took over for Frank Stewart, and this is actually… in terms of like history was a sort of a very important, sort of moment. Coreen Simpson was also taking classes at that time along with me and we were always the only students who were hanging out like constantly trying to learn this craft… So I took my first classes in New York [New York] at the Studio Museum.”[3] She credits the Studio Museum for some of the additions she made to her craft and also notes that collectives were important such as, “The Kamoinge was a phenomenal organization that had been started by Roy DeCarava and Lou Draper [Louis Draper]… the Kamoinge was a very important organization for black photographers in New York City.”[5]

HistoryMaker Dawoud Bey, The HistoryMakers, https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/dawoud-bey-40

HistoryMaker Dawoud Bey (1953-), who Ms. Weems highlighted in her interview, is the genius photographer behind exhibits such as his “Harlem, USA” collection which was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Mr. Bey displayed a similar sense of intentionality that Ms. Weems showed. He points to the exhibit, “Harlem on My Mind,” for really catapulting his desire to be a photographer: “Then a year after I got that camera from my godmother, there was an exhibition, [Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York] 'Harlem On My Mind', and because even at that point the Poor People's Campaign [campaign against poverty initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] was happening and I was becoming politicized and I heard about the controversy that was going on around this exhibition. There were demonstrations. The black community was upset, because there was an exhibition about the black community and yet, the works in the show were not made by African American photographers. So the black community felt that their voice was being excluded.”[6] In response to what he observed with this exhibit, Mr. Bey tells us that, “it was seeing that exhibition that made me realize the potential of photographs to talk about the human experience, you know, because clearly I think, my political activism was driven by certain kind of humanism. Seeing those photographs made me realize that the camera could be something of an extension of that.”[7]

HistoryMaker Deborah Willis, The HistoryMakers, https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/deborah-willis-41

HistoryMaker Deborah Willis (1948-) is a photographer who has done incredible work including as a Curator of Photographs and Prints at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Willis tells a beautiful story of her father’s influence on her love of photography, “my father [Thomas Willis] also is the--kind of the family photographer of--you know, I would always organize the pictures in the family album… we were constantly posed, but we also were constantly photographed with my father's… Rolleiflex, and so that was my entrance, and I became interested in documenting my aunts, when I could use the camera, photographing them and, and just different family events I would photograph.”[8] This story really resonated with me because my dad was always taking pictures throughout my childhood and carried a camera and camcorder with him to make meaningful note of memories. I cherish these photos and videos to this day and I am grateful that my dad documented these moments.

HistoryMaker Gordon Parks, The HistoryMakers, https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/gordon-parks-39

HistoryMaker Gordon Parks (1912-2006), was a photographer who had such an illustrious and impactful career that his name is almost synonymous with photography. HistoryMaker Parks is the inspiration behind the title of this blog post because he so beautifully noted that Roy Stryker, one of his inspirations, “was the first that, I suppose, to make me realize that the camera could be used as a weapon against discrimination and bigotry.”[9] Mr. Parks also emphasizes that Roy Stryker, “taught me the important things, that your subject matter, no matter how destitute they are… is the most important thing, not the famous cameraman whose name is spread all over the world but the people he photographed. It's what he does with his camera… you must by any means research your story before, well before you go on to a story so when something happens instantaneously, you can immediately capture it. If you have to stop and take a reading when you see something happening before you… you're gonna lose the picture probably, and if you see all the other cameramen gathered around shooting this from this direction, go just the opposite way, you know? This is what Roy used to tell us, and respect people.”[10]

Notes:

[1] Carrie Mae Weems (The HistoryMakers A2014.175), interviewed by Harriette Cole, September 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 7, Carrie Mae Weems recalls her introduction to photography

[2] Carrie Mae Weems (The HistoryMakers A2014.175), interviewed by Harriette Cole, September 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 3, Carrie Mae Weems talks about the exclusion of African Americans from critical art discourse

[3] Carrie Mae Weems (The HistoryMakers A2014.175), interviewed by Harriette Cole, September 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 7, Carrie Mae Weems talks about representing the black experience

[4] Carrie Mae Weems (The HistoryMakers A2014.175), interviewed by Harriette Cole, September 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 1, Carrie Mae Weems talks about the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City

[5] Carrie Mae Weems (The HistoryMakers A2014.175), interviewed by Harriette Cole, September 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 2, Carrie Mae Weems talks about her photography mentors

[6] Dawoud Bey (The HistoryMakers A2001.003), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, January 12, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 7, Dawoud Bey details his trajectory into art and photography

[7] Dawoud Bey (The HistoryMakers A2001.003), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, January 12, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 9, Dawoud Bey relates his early experiences with photography

[8] Deborah Willis (The HistoryMakers A2007.190), interviewed by Adrienne Jones, June 27, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 6, Deborah Willis describes her early interest in photography

[9] Gordon Parks (The HistoryMakers A2001.054), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, March 12, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 7, Gordon Parks describes the camera as a weapon

[10] Gordon Parks (The HistoryMakers A2001.054), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, March 12, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 6, Gordon Parks discusses his mentor, Roy Stryker

Izzy Torkornoo

Isabel (Izzy) Torkornoo (she/her/hers) from New York CIty, is a first-generation Ghanaian-American young woman who currently attends Wellesley College. At Wellesley, Izzy has continued her passion for global Black studies by majoring in Africana Studies. Her courses have created an expansive understanding of the vastness and incredible diversity of the African Diaspora across the world. She has also furthered her interests in education through becoming an Education minor and has aspirations to increase the presence and centrality of global Black studies in K-12 curricula. With a love for the spoken word and her own family’s oral traditions, Izzy brings a level of deep intentionality to the work of The HistoryMakers. Izzy is a rising senior at Wellesley and will graduate in the Spring of 2023.

Previous

Understanding Black Photographers
Next

Black on Stage: Theater Through the 1960s