The History Lesson
The International Center of Photography’s recent exhibition, African American Vernacular Photography: Selections from the Daniel Cowin Collection coordinated by Chief Curator Brian Wallis intends to “provide an important window into African American cultural life from 1860 to about 1930.”
However, the show feels somewhat blanched and tightly controlled in its effort to {re}present history. The selections were pulled from a subdivision of ICP’s larger catalogue, the Daniel Cowin Collection, which includes more than two thousand postcards, stereographs, cartes-de-visite, tintypes, albumen prints, and gelatin silver prints. Vernacular photography is defined as informal photography outside the realms of high-art, snapshots, studio portraits, postcards, and commercial photography. A broader selection of the Cowin Collection’s Modernist photography was mounted during the last spate of ICP exhibitions. If anything, African American Vernacular Photography can be understood as a discussion of status.
Arranged linearly in a loose chronology, African American Vernacular Photography appears to have two parts in which the tones greatly vary. The 70-plus photographic arrangement suggests an illusion of progress; stereotypic “Southern view” postcards and haunting plantation photographs eventually give way to portraits of an upwardly mobile black middle class, faces relatively line-free, swathed in finery, books in tow. However, a good number of these photographs were taken roughly during the same time. From the first half of the exhibition, what can be surmised of “cultural life” is not actually explained by what blacks made themselves, but through an omnipresent monologue of powerlessness, objectification and subjugation. Undeniably real black cultural life took place during this time period outside the eyes of white America and evidently, outside the photographic lens as well. In this respect, the initial images are unsuccessful as a testament to Jim Crow black culture; the mission is more closely achieved in the meatier captions, which are nothing new, yet functional reminders of restrictive covenants, migration other facts in US history.
Then, starting around the 1880s, a distinct change in agency develops as subjects sit for a personal portraits rather than for images called “Huckleberries” or “Ise Specs Ise Born Tired”- and thus, the tone of the exhibition takes an intentional turn for the noble. Here are the marks cultural life, the photographs are evidence of blacks creating culture, achieving social status, owning impressive belongings, becoming educated, being proprietary. There are bands, fraternal organizations, and sports clubs. Attractive men and women look sharp, living apparently vibrant lives. However, black status neither then nor today replaces black subjugation, and an alternative hanging or different selection could have depicted the diversity of the black experience by demonstrating these co-existing realities, rather than suggesting a narrative trajectory of working class into leisure class. Although social and material progress was undeniably attained, it feels consciously forced to turn the show towards a satisfying PC note.
For lovers of history, the exhibition is useful and intellectually satisfactory when placed in the context of prior historical understanding. Photographs including cotton bales, sugar cane and a slave’s raw, whipped back provide a startling truth to an era of American history usually discussed through reenactments, slim history lessons and guilt-infused clichés. However, this response is not necessarily immediate, given the images are very small and require intent inspection and dedicated face-time. African American Vernacular Photography requires a close read or a second look; some of the appeal of this show is what can be read between the lines and culled from the captions. However, a caption-inspired-thinking-exercise might not cut it for fans of vernacular photography. The accompanying catalogue works if you enjoy collecting images of black people, but as an exhibition it holds moderate interest.
In regard to vernacular photography, {sometimes known as “vintage photography” or “found photography”} African American Vernacular Photography is a bit uptight. An image from 1910 that shows two women laughing on a meadow is the most relaxed and candid of the exhibition. Absent is the unpredictability, the soft focus, and loose composition and that make vernacular photography a wildly popular area among amateur collectors, flea market junkies, and several huge flickr albums and vernacular-devoted websites. In terms of fine art application, African American Vernacular Photography even feels a bit rigid compared to ICP’s summer venture Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. Perhaps because African American history is usually treated with such sobriety? The final image, “Unidentified Woman with Camera,” ca. 1935, beckons like an advertisement, signaling the call of consumer photography, ostensibly changing vernacular photography and black image agency for years to come.
African American Vernacular Photography: Selections from the Daniel Cowin Collection is on view from December 9, 2005 to February 26, 2006 at The International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street.
