The Truth in Black and White

 

We see quite a few photographs these days. Social media and the internet rely on them as a means of communication unto themselves. Those photographs tell us a lot. This one, a stock photo, tells you that it is hilariously out of place.

An issue I hadn’t known about until relatively recently was how photography historically shortchanged Black subjects and people with darker skin. I listened to a piece on public radio about it a while back. And here’s a more recent written treatment:

Time for a new lens: The hidden racism behind photography , Solaya Huang for the Calgary Journal

I was motivated to bring this up today because of a group photograph taken at a recent event where it was clear that the photographer did not know how to cope with the fact that one of the subjects was a Black man: the County Executive. This has been an ongoing problem during Dr. Ball’s administration, though not constant. Clearly some photographers are savvy to this issue.

I wonder if he will look back on this time in his life as the time he was photographed with many white people, but badly. Now that I think about it, his years on the County Council probably inured him to this phenomenon. It’s rather symbolic, isn’t it? In the case of a mixed group, photographers will often adjust and correct to the lighter skin tones. 

So the Black people just look…bad. 

Take a look at this video from Vox. I’ve excerpted the photo below to give you an example of what happens in the photographs of mixed racial groups.

In the case of local photographers, particularly amateur ones, I don’t think this is done with a particularly evil or malicious intent.  There’s a lack of knowledge, clearly. But there’s likely an underlying bias that informs them. This is what they’ve always seen; they can imagine nothing different.

There’s so much of systemic racism that works like this.

People don’t “see” what is demeaning and othering in photographs that consistently make our Black leaders, artists, and neighbors look…awful. When you really think about it, that's simply unacceptable. We truly can do better than that here in Columbia/HoCo. Even with a cellphone camera you can at least take the time to make the most basic of adjustments to make the subjects of your photo look more like themselves.

If people feel more comfortable taking photographs of all-white groups, well…there are still plenty of all-white events locally for them to snap away to their hearts’ content.

Sigh.

That’s a blog post for another day.