James Holdt's website features a gallery which is a case study in racial oppression across the U.S. According to Holdt, he arrived in America in the early 1970s with $40, hitchhiked 118,000 miles and stayed in over 400 homes in 48 states.
Throughout his travels, he compiled over 15,000 provocative photographs depicting America's racist underbelly. There are pictures of black sharecroppers in Florida who were still picking cotton for a living. Holdt was allowed to live with them for a time and managed to photograph the sharecroppers' shacks, how they prepared their meals and even their children working in the cotton fields. The pictures seem to suggest that for many blacks in the 1970s, slavery had never really ended. There are even shuddersome pictures of the Klu Klux Klan. In another series, Holdt ventures north and presents us with images of stark poverty and drug abuse in New York. There are apartment buildings that appear to be abandoned -- filled with garbage, graffiti and broken windows -- until we see children playing in stairwells and dark hallways. Similar pictures are taken in D.C. and Detroit.
Many of the images are haunting -- some border on the grotesque with their portrayal of heroine and crack addicts (related: "How To Get Out the Game: An Interview with a Former Crack Dealer", The Liberator Magazine 3.1) -- and they offer an utterly grim portrait of black life in 1970s America. The shrewd observer will avoid feelings of the apocalyptic and instead find the collection to be a sobering snapshot of late 20th century racism and urban/rural poverty. Perhaps most fascinating of all are the images of America's ghettos at the peak of destitution. Today, the traditional inner city ghettos are quickly vanishing though the conditions that spawned them seem destined to remain.
Originally Posted 5/2/2011
4 comments:
Interesting piece from Fidel Castro: Council of State of China responds with comments on U.S. human rights record. "The restless and brutal North" (Every year, one of every five people is the victim of crime, the highest rate on the planet. According to official figures, those older than 12 years of age, suffer 4.3 million violent attacks)
So the photos are indeed deeply haunting...
I'm left pondering a few things:
1. The subject-object dichotomy: I'm curious about what WvS and others think of Holdt's decision to become a subject in certain chapters of the narrative and how that influences or shapes the narrative itself. (E.g. In Chapter 20: Apartheid's Forbidden Love, he details his relationship with Mary and the series of events that follow the budding of that relationship.) What does it mean for a storyteller--particularly one who is operating as an anthropologist of sorts--to enter his (or her) own narrative? What are the--intended and unintended--consequences, and who pays the cost?
2. Voice: Who has the power to tell whose stories? Who has the authority to 'speak' for whom? In Chapter 50: Our Oppression of the Black Woman, Holdt dispays a number of sexualized images of well, black women, but offers the following qualifier: "..the black American woman - contrary to what I later found in Africa - has developed enormous defense mechanisms against the white man in response to centuries of abuse." That's a hefty--and rather presumptuous, if I may say so myself--statement. But more importantly, he is offering a critique, yet contributing to the very objectification that he is arguing against. What does this mean in terms of voice for the 'subjects' of those and other photographs?
3. Pathology: Destitution is a dominant theme in Holdt's presentation of "late 20th century racism and urban/rural poverty." Given that the majority of people who engage with these photos are likely people who have limited or no knowledge of/interaction with the 'type' of folks who appear in the photos themselves, is it the artist's responsibility to also offer a balance to that narrative--one that speaks to the resilience of the 'subjects' in his photos? Is it the artist's responsibility to humanize the 'subject'? Does not humanizing the subject--unintentionally or not--objectify him/her/it? And if so, what are the consequences, in terms of what the messages that are communicated to the audience, and the 'take-aways' that the audience walks away with?
@starshineandclay:
1. Overall, the narrative serves as a guided tour for an audience that is far removed from the subject. Holdt's presence in some of the photographs represents a kind of reassurance to the viewer; a reassurance that someone sensitive to the observer's thoughts, anxieties, and even ignorance possesses a thorough understanding of the subject. By capturing himself in a few of the photographs, he merely confirms for the viewer that "he was really there".
Consequences? Perhaps there is an element of exhibitionism that emphasizes the subject-object dichotomy you spoke of, but it does not create it--that is something the viewer inevitably brings to the pictures.
Another observation: images of blacks as solemn and bare as these are not normally circulated in American media; what domestic magazine or even website would display them? If we believe that Holdt's pictures are in no way contrived, then we have to see them as artifacts, as visual memories which display in raw terms a shade of black reality in this country that is often only euphemistically and abstractly referred to in statistical terms.
2. By agreeing to be photographed (many of the women are posing), the subjects have ultimately entered into a contract which allows for their image to be interpreted and conveyed at the discretion of the photographer. Today, at least, there is a healthy stock of black photography (and the means to distribute it) that can counteract another photographer's misrepresentation of the black form.
3. I tend not to place those kinds of restrictions on artists. If Holdt's work is offensive, dishonest or somehow incomplete, then we have the liberty to ignore it, critique it, or design a work of our own that suits our tastes. We do not have to submit to his vision if we find it disingenuous.
@WilhelmvS: Interesting points.
The photos are inarguably authentic, or to use your language, 'raw' (and therefore, not at all disingenuous, in my opinion.)
I think my wonderings are less about exhibitionism and more about exploitation. The person holding the camera (or camcorder, or pen and pad, etc.) is in a position of power over the person on the other end--the 'subject'--in a way that for me, complexifies my interpretation of the resulting narrative. There's a really interesting documentary, "Secrets of the Tribe," directed by José Padilha, that explores this very issue through a thorough investigation of a group of anthropologists who, in the '60s and '70s, travelled to the Amazon to research the Yanomami Indians. His investigation focuses on and unearths some fascinating/appalling truths about the researchers motives and objectivity (or lack thereof.)
But Holdt doesn't claim to be an anthropologist--that's a label I'm assigning him, probably unfairly--so in this context, it is really a minor issue, and in some ways peripheral to this particular set of incredibly powerful photos. Thanks for sharing them...
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