Deborah Willis and Carla Williams. The Black Female Body: A Photographic History

African American Review, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Bridget R. Cooks

Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2002. 228 pp. $60.00 cloth/$35.00 paper.

Deborah Willis, professor of photography and imaging at New York University, and cultural critic Carla Williams have collaborated to author The Black Female Body: A Photographic History. This landmark book brings an important marginalized group to center stage through an extraordinary contribution to the study of photography, art history, women and gender, and the African Diaspora. Organized into three parts--"Colonial Conquest," "The Cultural Body," and "The Body Beautiful"--this book chronicles the various representational functions of the black female body in over 200 photographs from the African Diaspora beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. It presents a variety of images of the black female body, from its use in ethnographic study through reclamation in contemporary photography. The book challenges Eurocentric narratives that have defined the black female body as a scientific specimen, sexual object, and the antithesis of the "cult of true womanhood" as personified through the trope of the European and Euro-American idealized woman.

Willis and Williams state in their preface that the project stemmed from the desire to see their likenesses in photographic history. They provide a chronological and thematic review of what they discovered. For example, remarkable in the section "Ethnography, Photography, and the Grand Tour" is Drana, Country Born, Daughter of Jack, Guinea (1850), one of fifteen surviving photographs of American slaves commissioned by Swiss zoologist Louis Agassiz to support his theory of polygenisis. Also included is Native Woman of Sofala, Mozambique (1845) by French photographer E. Theisson. These photographs frame the black female body as criminal through the style of the frontal and profile mugshot poses still used today. These images portray the black female body nude from the waist up to easily record anatomical information for classification purposes. In this photographic project for "racial science," black female bodies are regarded as types rather than celebrated as individuals.

In the section "The New Negro in Photography," photographs such as Unidentified Young Black Woman (c. 1860) by Thomas Easterly and The Yo Mama (1993) by Renee Cox, Willis and Williams discuss and provide compelling examples of the black female body as a dignified image in the national social progress of African Americans. Although created in different centuries, these works address the continuity of black female creativity and determination, which are made visible and respected through photography. The authors also address the role of the image of the black female body in the struggle to redefine beauty, sexuality, and social equality in the sections "The Lesbian Body" and "Perception of Beauty" through works including She (1992) by Lorna Simpson, Dyke Deck (1996) by Cathie Opie, and Yvette (1987) by Albert Chong.

In addition, the authors discuss images from popular culture such as the now infamous mammy and child image Breast Feeding (1989) by Oliviero Toscani from Benetton's Campaigns for Racial Equality and Brian Lanker's popular book, calendar, and photographic exhibition "I Dream a World."

Readers benefit from Willis's and Williams's insight and expertise as artists and scholars who have worked within renowned photographic resources such as the Photographs and Prints Collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Collection of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and also as women who are part of the cultural group of which they write. Many of the photographs included have never been publicly displayed by their collectors, and this book gives readers the opportunity to examine the current and historical discourse of the representation of the black female body across national borders through this one-of-a-kind collection.

Willis's and Williams's writing is lucid and informative. Readers who have no previous experience exploring the world of photography will find the text engaging and relevant to a variety of disciplines outside of the visual arts. The Black Female Body differs from other photographic texts that address the role of black women in photography such as Willis's own Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to The Present (Norton, 2000), Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (Writers and Readers Publishers, 1986), and A Century of Black Photographers, 1840-1960, edited by Valencia Hollins Coar (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1983). What makes the work of Willis and Williams distinct is the book's focused analysis of the history of representation of the black female body rather than their surveying images by African American photographers or photographs made exclusively by African American women. This fascinating and ambitious project challenges us as readers to go further into this new discourse. As Willis and Williams state at the end of the preface, "We hope that other scholars will build on our work and examine the image of the black female in all media and in all of her aspects."