Description
Book SynopsisBlack Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly inquiry and contemporary art, this book addresses these misconceptions and fills in the gaps that exist in the photographic representation of Black motherhood, mothering, and mutual care within Black communities. The essays and interviews, paired with a curated selection of images, address the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and in particular its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture - primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. This collection, then, challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal stories, history, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration. This visual exploration of Black motherhood through pictures made by Black woman-identifying photographers thus serves as a reflection of the past and a portal to the future and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexity of Black life and Black joy. This book emerges from the project Women Picturing Revolution. For more information, visit womenpicturingrevolution.com Contributing authors: Tomi Akitunde (founder and editor-in-chief of mater mea), Grace Aneiza Ali (New York University), Emily Brady (University of Nottingham), Lesly Deschler Canossi (Women Picturing Revolution), Nicole J. Caruth (independent curator), Haile Eshe Cole (University of Connecticut), Atalie Gerhard (Saarland University), Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley College), Rachel Lobo (York University), Zoraida Lopez-Diago (Women Picturing Revolution), Salamishah Tillet (Rutgers University), Scheherazade Tillet (A Long Walk Home), Brie McLemore (University of California, Berkeley), Renee Mussai (Autograph London), Marly Pierre-Louis (independent curator), Jonathan Michael Square (Parsons School of Design), Susan Thompson (independent curator), Jennifer Turner (Hollins University), Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University), Rhaisa Kameela Williams (Princeton University) Contributing artists: Nydia Blas, Samantha Box, Renee Cox, Andrea Chung, Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, vanessa german, Ayana V. Jackson, Lebohang Kganye, Deana Lawson, Qiana Mestich, Marcia Michael, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Keisha Scarville, Mickalene Thomas, Mary Sibande, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Willis.
Trade ReviewThis edited volume contributes to recent projects centering Black reproductive rights and practices of care in Black communities on a practical and scholarly level. With the focus on photography and representation, the anthology provides a focus that is in its scope underrepresented and underexplored. The mixture of interviews, academic essays, poetry, interviews and other forms of writing and carefully curated color plates at the end of the volume provide not only a refreshing and innovative format to cover the wide and diverse range of approaches but also provides an important methodological contribution to existing scholarship.
Henriette Gunkel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
The publication of Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing is an invaluable resource that makes space for the experiences and stories of motherhood to be examined and celebrated. This discussion of Black matrilineage in photography consciously moves away from the controlling images that have limited representations of Black motherhood in popular culture. It also enhances not only the discourse around the history of photography but shows the potential for the mainstream to open up new pathways for the representation of Black motherhood that can affect change across various systems and hopefully improve real-life conditions for Black mothers.
Jennifer S. Musawwir, Daily Art Magazine, 27 February 2023, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/black-matrilineage/
This sprawling open-access volume brings together texts by artists, curators, and scholars whose backgrounds span the fields of history, Africana studies, sociology, and visual culture. The result is an equally expansive breadth of approaches to the conjuncture of blackness and the maternal... While this multiplicity makes 'Black Matrilineage' challenging to wrestle into a single narrative, it is ultimately a strength for how the volume should be used: as a reference text for readers and educators to engage with specific topics of blackness and the maternal - Megan Driscoll, Woman’s Art Journal, Fall / Winter 2023 Volume 44, Number 2
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Our Mother, My Muse Salamishah Tillet and Scheherazade Tillet
Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago
PART ONEMORE BLACK AND MORE BEAUTIFUL: SOCIAL MEDIA & DIGITAL CULTURE IN THE REWRITING OF SELF
1 Regarding the Pain of Our Own: Jazmine Headley, Portraiture, and the Sorrow of Black Motherhood Brie McLemore 2 Beyond “Welfare Queens” and “Baby Mamas”: Low-Income Black Single Mothers’ Resistance to Controlling Images Jennifer L. Turner 3 Black Motherhood Online: A Reimagined Representation: A Conversation with Tomi Akitunde Kellie Carter Jackson 4 Thotty Mommies: The Erotic Potential of Black Mothers Online Marly Pierre-Louis
PART TWO“TURNING THE FACE OF HISTORY TO YOUR FACE”: SEEING THE REAL SELF THROUGH REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK MOTHERHOOD
5 Motherhood in the work of Deana Lawson – A conversation with the Artist Susan Thompson 6 Photographic Afterimages: Nationalism, Care Work and Black Motherhood in Canada Rachel Lobo 7. “I Like to Make Pictures of Children”: African American Women Photographers and Wielding the Weapon of ‘Motherhood’ Emily Brady 8 Losses Not to Be Passed On: Paula C. Johnson’s and Sara Bennett’s Portraits Rewriting (Ex-) Incarcerated Black Mothers Atalie Gerhard 9 Speaking of “unspeakable things unspoken” Sasha Turner
PART THREE“YOU ARE YOUR BEST THING”: SELF-CARE AS A SITE OF RESISTANCE
10 Black Birth Matters – A Conversation with Andrea Chung and D’Yuanna Allen-Robb Nicole J. Caruth 11 Worth a Thousand Words: Visualizing Black Motherhood and Health Haile Eshe Cole 12 Three Black Mothers in a Cleveland Cabaret Rhaisa Williams
PART FOUR“IN SEARCH OF MY MOTHER’S GARDEN, I FOUND MY OWN”: BLACK FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS AND THE MATRILINEAL SPACE
13 Letter IV: Where Are They? – M/othering R/evolutions Renée Mussai 14 Every Day is Mother’s Day in My Book: Black Motherhood in the Work of Nona Faustine Simmons Jonathan Michael Square 15 The Motherland Between Us Grace Aneiza Ali 16 The Impossibility of Breathing When the Sun Covers Your Face Marcia MichaelPART FIVE“THE ASSERTION OF THE LIFEFORCE”: A SELECTION OF WORKS CURATED BY WOMEN PICTURING REVOLUTION
Afterword. Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing Régine Michelle Jean-Charles
Contributors Artists Colophon
