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Black Photographers — and Those Pictured — Deserve More
The so-called ‘objective’ view of the camera is quite subjective
Black photographers still live in a world of “firsts.” Dario Calmese this year became the first Black photographer to take a photograph for the cover of Vanity Fair. Dana Scruggs was the first Black photographer to work on a cover for Rolling Stone in 2019. Tyler Mitchell was the first Black photographer to work on a cover for Vogue in 2018. Legendary photographer Carrie Mae Weems was the first Black woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014. This list of so-called achievements should be longer and categorically expansive. Better yet? The list should not exist.
These firsts are small windows. They’re reluctant openings of the narrow avenues to opportunity offered by a predominantly White body of gatekeepers. The homogeneity and decisive power of these institutions are not accidental. They’re working exactly as they should. When you live in a society built on the subjugation of Black bodies — where Whiteness is the price of entry and anti-Blackness makes up the totality of its worldview — the collective social and cultural order is not immune to the surrounding context. It draws sustenance from it. Anti-Black ideology is the toxic water in which all creators swim.
As a medium, photography has been the perfect tool in this world order. Behind the lens, the photographer is rendered invisible, leaving only their subjects on display. The act of making an image — camera held between photographer and subject — is as much a literal barrier as it is a metaphorical one. The distance it creates provides the illusion of objectivity. You, a photographer, are reflecting a moment as it is. You are producing an evidentiary object, a “truthful” representation. This act of looking is also an act of possessing, marking the moment as the photographer sees it, and making it available for public consumption. The tangible and portable nature of the resulting photograph enables quick and effective spreading of the ideas and values it props up. Yet, what’s ultimately seen is informed by perspective, which is inherently personal and in turn, subject to prejudice and bias.
Nothing we do is disconnected from the social, political…
