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Thread: African American Large Format Photographers

  1. #51

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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    Incidently, for those interested, the 'Atomic Negro' was Jesse Ernest Wilkins, who attained his Ph.D from the University of Chicago, he worked on the 'Manhatten Project' from 1944 to 1946.

    Quoting another source about Professor Williams,................"From 1960-70, Wilkins was Assistant Chairman of the Theoretical Physics Department and Assistant Director of the Atomic Division of General Dynamics Corporation from 1960 to 1965. In 1970, Dr. Wilkins was appointed as Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematical Physics at Howard University. Dr. Wilkins was a joint owner of a company which designed and developed nuclear reactors for electrical power generation.

    Dr. J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. is a past President (1974) of the American Nuclear Society. One of Wilkins' major achievements has been the development of radiation shielding against gamma radiation, emitted during electron decay of the Sun and other nuclear sources. He developed mathematical models by which the amount of gamma radiation absorbed by a given material can be calculated. This technique of calculating radiative absorption is widely used among researchers in space and nuclear science projects. In 1976, Wilkins was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering."
    Jonathan Brewer

    www.imageandartifact.bz

  2. #52
    Beverly Hills, California
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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    There are NOT a lot of blacks in LF photography at any level, out of proportion to the % of population - at least from looking at the participant group shots from various workshops and conferences. As half African American / half "American of European descent", I hope I can say that. African Americans tend to express themselves artistically more through music and writing as opposed to visually.

    Trends like this happen at any given time.

    There are not a lot of whites running the quarter mile at the international level...
    Last edited by Andre Noble; 13-Jun-2006 at 22:57.

  3. #53
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Brewer
    'But anyone dismissing the possibility of looking at work through a racial/cultural lens is kidding themselves.'.........................I would dismiss it because I don't look at it that way,.....
    Because you choose not to look at work a certain way, you dismiss the possibility of looking at work in other ways?


    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Brewer
    The artifacts of the Yoruba, their various scupltures and masks, were religious artifacts used in the pursuit of spirituality/meditation, and as representations of 'higher beings', fertility Gods, even a patron saint of workers
    What I'm not sure you see in this example is that these are PRECISELY definitions of art. The possibility of art existing as something other than sacred objects used for worship or meditation is a very recent one in the history of civilization

    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Brewer
    Picasso had the gift of 'seeing' Africa Art for what it was, and that is a comment of Picasso's gift of seeing
    I can't comment on his ability to see it for what it was ... I have no way of knowing what he saw in it or what it meant to him. I do know that his contribution amounted to apropriating and recontextualizing it. He took certain formal and esthetic attributes of it, but left behind all the cultural/sacred attributes. This was a defining step for modernism, because it was a pure act of art as profanity, in the classical sense (of removing something from temple and bringing it out to the profanum, of secularizing it). He was, in effect, saying that we don't need to worship their gods to worship the forms that they wrought. This was an act of revolution, which implies creation but also violence.

    He tore the work away from it's sacred roots. But does this suggest he saw it for "what it was," or simply that he found a way to see it as something else?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Brewer
    I don't look through any kind of racial lens when looking at work, it's impossible not to look through a cultural lens, this is all about culture, it can't be any other way, we all are from somewhere, and in the best sense, we all convey the richness and uniqueness of our heritage, and how we see things.
    I agree with you here. Where my views conflict with yours are in the areas where race and culture are inextricably tangled. There are parts of our country (geographic and demographic), where race and culture are so closely tied that for all practical purposes you could consider them the same.

    My argument is not that we must look at work racially, or even that we must look at it in terms of what culture produced it (Picasso, in your example, showed the possibility of pure formalism). I am only suggesting that looking at work as the product of a culture, which in some cases also implies race, is not only legitemate but natural. There are in fact whole schools of literary criticism that revolve around African American fiction as a racial-cultural phenomenon, championed by critics like Cleanth Brooks and Ishmael Reed. If it makes sense in literature I don't why not in photography.
    Last edited by paulr; 14-Jun-2006 at 05:02.

  4. #54

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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    You said this,..............."Because you choose not to look at work a certain way, you dismiss the possibility of looking at work in other ways?"..................the answer is of course not, 'cuz #1, I didn't say or suggest that, what I said was, I don't look at work through a racial lens, because everybody belongs to one race, the idea of different races doen't exist, we do however belong to various ethnic backgrounds, we all have a heritage, and #2, anyone can look at work in any way they wish, apart from me or anyone discussing it the way we're discussing it here.


    You pick this statement of mine................"Picasso had the gift of 'seeing' Africa Art for what it was, and that is a comment of Picasso's gift of seeing"..........................and take it out of context, and then characterize it within a framework of yours and not the way I originally meant the statement. Before Picasso, African Artifacts such as the work of the Yoruba were 'dismissed' as crude and primitive, as I've said, they can choose to look at the work in any way they wish, ..............were they right? I suggest to you that they were totally off the 'mark'.

    Picasso came along, was profoundly affected/inspired by Afican Art as it related to his own work, he saw something in Afican Art that CHANGED the way others saw it as it changed and evolved his work, he saw things in African Art that involved symbolism, and the metaphor, that created a change, a growth, a new way of thinking in the way he made art, and he provided us with a lens with which many could see what they could not see before.

    You seem to suggest in your response that there's got to be some kind of specificity about all of this, I can't read Picasso's or any other artists mind in terms of what he/she was thinking in terms of what inspires the evolution of their art, I don't th ink it makes any difference, the inspiration is profound, the art evolves....... art and everything we're discussing now about art is on several levels, African Art was not created as just something to be looked at, but then again that would hold true for a painting that was not created as a means of worship, ...............a painting can involve a representation of something spiritual, we can be moved by that spiritualism and still appreciate the execution of the painting, and the reverse would be true when considering African Art.

    We can understand art and how it reflects life, and culture, and religion, on many levels and any number of ways, to sum this all up, I think that the idea of 'race' the many folks think of it is 'blindness', they only 'see' stereotype regarding people that are not like them, the stereotyping extends not only to the people, but whatever they create, and hence we go back 'full circle' to the dismissal of African Art as 'crude' and 'primitive' and 'mindless'.

    The more you travel, the more you see of the rest of the world, the more you can see how evident the idea becomes that the differences are a blessing/enrichment to our lives,...............one of the greatest photographs I ever saw, which is also a photograph that testifies to how silly the negative aspect of this can be, was taken when Muhammed Ali showed at at KKK rally, and was asked by several of the hooded folks if they could pose with him in a picture.

    That picture shows the silliness and folly of rigid thinking/the stereotype/the hatred of our differences, I see people/their culture/folks of different ethnic backgrounds as additive, not subtractive, and their differences as an enrichment.
    Jonathan Brewer

    www.imageandartifact.bz

  5. #55

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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    If you watch many of the commercials on TV, many/most of the African Americans will have an exaggerated 'souther drawl', even some of the actors/actresses where it's obvious to me that they're not from the south. The way they they've been directed to talk, the accent, is because the folks making the commerical, believe that all blacks talk that way, they don't, I don't, I'm from Chicago.

    My wife of 25 years is from Arkansas, her folks who come to visit us will bust out laughing when they see one of these commercials, since they can tell a 'real' southern drawl. I live in a predominately white neighborhood, Redondo Beach, when we first moved here, on one of my morning walks, I had somebody watering his lawn, ask me if I needed directions back to my 'own' neighborhood. This guy couldn't 'see' me as somone who lives in the same community as him(and he wanted to let me know it).

    I give up the above as examples of wanting to remain blind as opposed to any attempt to want to see, in regards to what you were saying about parts of our country where race and culture are inextricably intertwined as you suggest, as there's simply no thing as race, culture exists, race doens't, we're all in the same race, there's no race aspect of this, there's no such thing as racial because there was never any racial purity.

    The belief in race, is part of the problem,...............they had a documentary about Thomas Jefferson's descendants on the discovery channel(I don't think it's any secret nowadays that Jefferson 'partied hard' with his African American slaves), in one scene they assembled a group of what was considered his African American descendants, many of them looked 'white', and lived as 'whitefolks', although many of them did not go out of their way to promote that they were anything other than what they were, African Americans who might look to some folks as if they were 'white', in fact it was their friends and co-workers and so forth who chose to think of them as 'white', some of these folks chose to live in predominately black communities.

    Many African Americans, including an uncle of mine, passed himself off as white, to go a university which discriminated against blacks, once he got his degree, he was black again. The same thing was done by members of other ethnic backgrounds, and it has done for years/a lot of years, everybody has been 'mixing it up, and partying both ways', there's no race and/or racial purity, it doens't exist.



    That some folks are entrenched and adamantine in believing old stereotypes and beliefs, is simply a cas of the closed mind determined to stay in a dark room instead of 'turning the light on', when they have the truth sitting in front of them.

    There's different culture, there's ethnicity, there are no different races, just one.
    Jonathan Brewer

    www.imageandartifact.bz

  6. #56
    Robert Oliver Robert Oliver's Avatar
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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    I'm a fan of Dok Blanchard's work. Nice guy too. He's a large format photographer currently working out of the San Diego area.

    Dok Blanchard.
    Robert Oliver

  7. #57
    Resident Heretic Bruce Watson's Avatar
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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    Quote Originally Posted by Sandy Sorlien
    Fred has some good points, especially the one that being identified black/Latino/female/whatever can be a drawback when exhibitions are scheduled. But more often these days it's an advantage, as an implicit or explicit "affirmative action of the arts" has been taking place in many institutions. I'm all for that.
    Sigh... Most people are for discrimination, as long as it works in their favor. At least you are honest about it. Not that it's anything to be proud of.

    Bruce Watson

  8. #58

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    Re: African American Large Format Photographers

    What my Uncle did has nothing to do with the way I feel, I disagree with what he did, and I did the opposite of him, I wore an Afro out to my shoulders, and was proud of it, and marched on the administration while in school several times for several issues regarding African American students.

    You are nothing without pride in your heritage and where you came from, I believe that and teach my kids that. It's not hard to be honest about what my Uncle did, because that's what he did, his choice was his choice, but neither do I feel shame about his actions either, he did what he did to obtain something being refused him for no good reason, as to me, I'll always be upfront about what I am and pround of it.

    I
    Jonathan Brewer

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