How do images of P.H.Polk and Khadija Saye, show change of representation of black identity?

‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’. –  Martin Luther King, Jr. March On Washington, 8th August 1963

In this essay, I will be looking at the way that the depiction of black people has progressed over the last 150 years. I will be comparing and contrasting with the 19th century when photographic records began to emerge with modern day technologies, such as social media platforms. YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, where an individual is in control of their own representation. With old technologies, such as newspapers and TV one person or group of people were in control of the messages that would be broadcast to the public, as discussed by David Gauntlett. However, since the growth of the internet, there are multiple platforms in which a person is able to express their voice. So audiences have a much wider range of direct sources of information in which they can use for their opinions on topics, groups, or people. The 18th to 19th century was the height of colonialism, at this point in history slavery was being used all over the world. Slaves were being transported largely from Africa, this continued until 1835 when Britain abolished its slavery throughout the whole of its empire by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The U.S abolished Slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment, but segregation in America was not ended until 1963. In modern day society, all nationalities legally have equal rights, but there is still some social inequalities. Such as workers who come over from countries such as Poland and Romania, they face prejudice from many white English groups, due to them living and raising families in the UK, this tension had only been made worse by events such as Brexit. I will be looking at the works of P. H Polk, who photographed acute portraits of African Americans post civil war that first gave black people an equal photographic representation. I will compare him to Khadija Saye, her self portraits express her multicultural background. I have chosen to analyses these artists due to their links to my personal project on ‘Political Landscapes’, in which I am looking back at my life growing up as a mixed-race child in a mainly white society in the island of Jersey and having little connection to black culture. These artists look at the expression of the black identity through photography, when the images are compared it is clear how the view of black identity has changed.

The first documentation of Black People in Photography

As western society progressed much quicker than other countries in the world, due to colonization and economic progression, they developed many new technologies faster as they had a larger amount of resources to draw on. Louis Agassiz 1807 -1873, was the founder of comparative zoology at the University of Harvard who had an avid interest of photographic data. Due to his photographic documentation interest, he authorized the portrait commission on the front, back and side views of slaves from a North Carolina plantation in 1850. These were one, if not the first images of black people for scientific purposes. He wanted to provide visual evidence for his theory that the races were created separately at different times in the world. Whites being developed first then other nationalities, because at this time many people believed that humans were created from God.  An idea that slavery supporters felt would have scientifically justified their use of slavery and saw no problem with racial inequality. Fifteen daguerreotypes of the slave who was name ‘Jack’ where taken by J.T.Zealy. In the image below Jack is romantically lit, emphasizing facial features that make him appear noble, pensive and unassuming. This romantic side lighting has been used to intensify his facial features and prove Agassiz’s theory. Although these images were meant to be compared and contrasted with other physical body types to prove his theory, no other images of compatible exposed white men and woman went along with these daguerreotypes. The main purpose of Zaley’s image were to convince viewers that racial inequality was acceptable because blacks, had been created later and therefore are less intelligent. His way of thinking has been influential in the term. Theorist Edward Said theory of Orientalism describes their reasoning behind their actions. ‘Westerners had no evidence apart from their upbringing and experiences in life in to which they made the judgments on other races. So they showed it in a limited way as it was too different from the culture that they had experienced'{6}. Agassiz was validated that what he was doing was right as it was accepted by his peers who had the same viewpoint on the world. In their eyes, the western imperialist invasion and colonization was justified as they were saving themselves as they were the superior race. This photographs contributed ideas to the Eugenic Movement’s viewpoint of white racial superiority, these ideas were later adopted and promoted by the Nazis who actually invaded and occupied Jersey in 1940.

Pictorial and Straight Photography 

The straight photography movement began in 1905 as a reaction against the Pictorialism movement, the dominant style of photography at this time. Pictorialism, aesthetic emphasized beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality. The images tended to look similar to romanticism in paintings which tended to be very fantasy and dreamlike. To create this effect pictorial photographers would often smear Vaseline around the lens of the camera to make the image distorted. Straight photography became the trademark style of many Western photographers the most famous being Ansel Adams. Straight photography emphasizes and engages with the camera’s own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail. Straight photographs have not been manipulated, either in the taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes, but sharply depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it. The movement became associated with masculinity due to the sharpness of the images to contrast the femininity of the Pictorialist movement. My work on political landscape has links to both the Straight photography, and Pictorialist movements movement as all of the images that I have produced have been in a documentary approach, by looking back on the life that I have lived in Jersey. When shooting the images I have used s straight photograph approach. But on the shoot when I went around Jersey and visited places from my childhood I have manipulated the images to be blurry and fuzzy to show a disconnection to me as a teenager, so my editing process has been greatly inspired by the Pictorialist movement.

H. Polk

H. Polk was an African American photographer born in 1989 in Bessemer, Alabama, he first became involved with photography after he met C.M.Battley, who was the head of Tuskegee’s Photography Department, who later became his mentor. He was speaking of the potential of the photographic movement and was encouraging students to come and see if they had any interest in the subject. After this meeting, Polk went up to Chicago to further his study of photography with his blessing. He then returned to his home town and opened his own studio and then took over as the head of Tuskegee photography department. In which he documented many critical moments in the civil rights movements on the campus. In much of his early work, he photographed his subjects on a Kodak box camera with a Graphex lens, in which he has been praised by credits for his technical mastery of the medium but not having the best equipment. His book Through These Eyes: The Photographs of P.H. Polk is a collection of over 100 hundred photographs that depict southern life in all of its different forms, the images range from the African American scientist George Washington Carver to images of the farmers working the land the cotton fields in Macon County. These collection of images are essential in my eyes, in showing the differences of how African/ Americans saw one other, to how white Americans saw them. One of his most influential series, ‘Old Characters’, in which he documented ex-slaves from Macon County. One of the reasons that I decided to pick P.H.Polk as one of my photographers to references is because of that way that he documented African Americans. In his images, they are presented with class, dignity, and humanity. When compared to the first documentation of African Americans, in which they are shown as specimens of nature, and photographed as freaks of nature who need to be studied. Polk’s images show a great comparison of how the civil rights movement started the change of attitude towards blacks in America culture.

This image was taken in 1932 and is entitled ‘The Boss’. The image looks as if it was taken in a studio using artificial lighting that looks to be coming from the left-hand side of the frame. The woman in the frame who looks to be from the working class from the look of what she is wearing has been positioned in a powerful stance with her hands on her hips. It looks as if the camera was taken from a lower angle as the woman in the frame is looking down into the frame, which is in turn giving her the power. She is looking directly down the lens to the viewer which, draws the onlooker into the image makes the images more personal.

Khadija Saye

Khadija Saye born in London in 1992 was a British – Gambian artist and photographer, who tragically lost her life in the Grenfell tower Disaster in 2017. At age 16 she won a full scholarship to the prestigious Rugby school where her passion of photography first began to grow, she then went on to take a BA in Photography at UCA Farnham, where she first began to experiment with her Gambian identity in relation to photography. In early 2017 Saye, completed nine tintype photographers from she project she entitled ‘Dwelling: in this space, we breathe’ these self-portraits where on Gambian spiritual practices.  This project was set to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, which is a prestigious international art exhibition held every two years in Italy. Her works were meant to be included in a project entitled ‘ Diaspora Pavilion’, in which a group of contemporary artist from racially diverse backgrounds presented work on the theme of migration and displacement. Each image was a self -portrait, in which Saye performs a different, time-honoured, Gambian spiritual ritual. For the project she drew on her own self-interest and explored the emotions, feeling and consequences of her journey and heritage.

These images were created to look a certain way, inspired by the Victorian era of tintype photography, in which the image is created by using a wet metal plate and collodion solution. Tintype photography is affected by the environment that they are developed in such as the consistency of the light and the temperature. I personally think that she decided to present her work in this format because there are very few portraits of black woman in the 19th century when this type of technology was being used. It gives the images a sense of incongruous to them which then makes the viewer think about the historic documentation of black people throughout photography. When I look at the image the first thing that I connect it with is images of slaves from the 19th century when black people were being photographed as a part of their plantations owners property. Making the images became impactful for Saye, ‘whilst exploring the notions of spirituality and rituals, the process of image-making became a ritual in itself ’.{4}.In the images, Saye in wearing a traditional Gambian headwrap, and is holding an incense burner which is an item considered to be sacred in The Gambia. The image looks as if it was taken in a studio, it is unclear if Saye took this image using a shutter release so she would have been pressing the shutter, as her hand is out of the frame, or whether there was somebody on set with her. Saye’s eyeliner looks as if she is looking up to the burning incense, this may be a symbolic sign because the incense is used is spiritual practices, that maybe she is trying to seek approval from a higher power. The fact that she is facing away from the camera in his image, maybe representing the fact that she like many other black woman face prejudice, and are seen as the stereotypes set around they are seen to be connected to.

Conclusion

There are more similarities than differences between P.H.Polks and Khadija Saye work, but both of them show black self-expression, in its purest form. The person in front of the camera is in charge of the message that is being expressed. Which is greatly important as for a lot of history, the way that the black identity was depicted in images and history was the way that white people saw ‘the other.’  The main difference between the two artists work is that Says, has taken more of a tabuex approach to her project ‘ Dwelling: in this space we breathe’. As she is recreating parts of The Gambia spiritual practices, rather than taking a documentary approach to these traditions. Whereas P.H.Polks images, are more formal and were trying to communicate to the audience at that black people are equal, what this project did at the time was show them as individuals with humanity behind them, as at this time there was still a massive racial divide in America. These two photographers have greatly influenced the way that I have looked at myself, in the Political Landscape project. In the project, I haven’t taken any images of myself in the present day, but studying these photographers it has made me see how these images could be interpreted in a different way. Because I grew up in a white society, I forgot to look at myself and see that I was different from most of the people that I was surrounded by. Which did help my experience growing up in some way as I was oblivious to the differences that society saw, but the society that I grew up did see me as different. Which I mainly think was due to the fact that I had a very happy childhood, and I felt accepted in the environment that I was in so I had no need to have a sense of longing for anything else. One of the ways that I expressed this in my project was through the editing of the archival images that I used.

In this project I have distorted the pictures of me and my father together he was the only black person that I had around me when growing up to look up to. I wanted to get across that the image of black/mixed race families in the media is often distorted, and makes out that the child of the relationship will not be as happy as a child of a nuclear white family. One of the things that I really liked about Kahijas images was use of The Gambia headscarf that she can be seen to be wearing in her images, by wearing this it shows a connection to her country and to her heritage. One of the ways that I did this is my project was thought the techniques of ‘Rephotography’. In which I found images of myself as a child and then went back to these locations now and line up the images with what the area looks like now, by doing this I felt as if really drew the connection of Jersey becoming apart of my identity and how the island has shaped me into becoming the person that I am today, into the project in a visual way. To conclude, Saye and Polk have shown a dramatic change in the way that black people and the black identity have changed by taking control of the messages that are being communicated to the audience .

Bibliography

1.Wikipedia ( December 2018), P.H.Polk, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.H.Polk

2.Wikipedia ( November 2018 ), Khadija Saye, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadija_Saye

3.Wikipedia ( February 2018 ), Straight Photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_photography

4.Christies (27 September 2018), ‘Heat warming and haunting – two works of Khadija Saye’ https://www.christies.com/features/Heartwarming-and-haunting-works-by-Khadija-Saye-9410-1.aspx

5.Mary. W. M (2002), Photography: A Cultural History. Laurence King Publishing

6. MACAT.(4 April 2018), Edward Said – An Introduction to Orientalism.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aNwMpV6bVs