March 31 to May 14, 2016
40 E 63rd St #2 (between Park and Madison avenues)
New York, 917 868 9010

A lot has been said on the idea of “black genius” of late. In February, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, Dr. Jordana Saggese, Kim Drew, Dr. David Clinton Wills and Juliana Huxtable were part a symposium titled “Basquiat and Contemporary Queer Art,” focusing on Jean-Michel Basquiat as a symbol of black genius. In March, critic Jason Parham, in a review of Kanye West’s Life of Pablo (2016) and Kendrick Lamar’s untitled unmastered (2016) for Fader, called “On the Occasion of Black Genius,” wrote at length about the concept.

So what is this concept of black genius? The term, I believe, was first brought to public attention with the book Black Genius: African American Solutions to African American Problems (2000) — featuring texts by Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee, bell hooks, and others. The book’s editor, Walter Mosley, describes “genius” in his introduction, as a “quality that crystallizes the hopes and talents and character of a people.” Therefore black genius is perhaps best described as the greatness of an individual that rewards the larger community of black people, contrasted against the American Dream — a system rooted in the presumed authority of middle-class, white, cisgender men. As a result, the term not only expresses black pride and excellence, but black power and solidarity.

If one were to look retrospectively, there is no doubt that one of the most influential artists to exemplify black genius would be Harlem-born photographer Roy DeCarava. A new exhibition of his work, titled “New York 19,” at Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art, is emblematic of this, featuring a series of nine silver gelatin photographs. The photographs were shown in a TV movie called Belafonte: New York 19, a musical special celebrating Postal Code 19, “the city’s midtown melting pot of diversity, culture and the arts,” broadcast on CBS in 1960. (All the photographs on view were made that same year, with the exception of Child Playing at Curb, Eighth Avenue, 1952.)

DeCarava, better known for his photographs of famous jazz musicians, spent most of his career documenting everyday life in Harlem. A graduate of Cooper Union, he disavowed painting as a white man’s medium and picked up the camera, being one of the first artists to spearhead photography as a legitimate art form and thereby making it his own. He was the first African-American photographer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship in 1952. DeCarava’s photographs have an overwhelming sense of beauty and depth. The impact is immediately visceral. When looking at his pictures I am struck at how washed out and flat they are­ (this is not a bad thing)—nothing is too garish or high-contrast, yet the range in tonality from gray to black is immeasurable.

The overarching theme of “New York 19” is loneliness. Four photographs bear the title Lonely Woman, each one capturing a female figure in isolation: a young black girl in a white dress sitting on a trash can and leaning her head over a metal gate, one arm bent over her back. In another, a black woman with sunglasses and a fur coat sits alone on the bus. A woman, her back facing us, dressed all in black with a black scarf around her head, walks wearily down the sidewalk, and a black woman dressed all in black, carrying her baby covered in white sheets down a desolate block full of scattered bricks and dust. The last one in particular is reminiscent of DeCarava’s well-known photograph Graduation (1952), which depicts a young black woman in a white gown, similarly walking alone through a dark, desolate block full of trash and rubble.

This feeling of loneliness is expressed not just in isolation, but also in contemplation — a loneliness that is more internal and shared. This is indicative of how DeCarava chooses to show his female subjects either in complete isolation or, in some cases, large groups. It is not hard to imagine that these women may be mourning the loss of a son or brother, or they are struggling to make ends meet as a single mother, tired of long days work. The feeling may also just be that of fatigue or existential angst, but all are situated within a black experience. And this is not to say that DeCarava’s photographs do not transcend race and class, but they do demand a certain attention to the specificity of the black figure. It is through this figure that DeCarava is able to provide an image that dutifully expresses the duality between oppression and resilience. The photographs’ dreamlike compositions and dramatic lighting, suggest a certain mood that not only showcases the vulnerability of these black figures, but also, the quiet and perhaps unnoticed perseverance and strength of black femininity.

In International, a young woman sits on the wing wall of a stoop in three-quarter pose. One can barely see the profile of her face, highlighted at the top of her cheekbone and brow. The back of her head, her short black curled hair, is the focus, at the center of the composition. She rests her left hand on her hip, while casually holding the end of a jump rope in her right hand, as a girl and boy prepare to jump into its swing — the person holding the other end of the rope is outside the frame, unseen. Two young men stand at the top near the doorway. One girl standing in the background, on the top step, stares blankly at the camera. Despite all this activity, the woman who is the image’s focus appears tired, ruminative, and alone among the people and presumed excitement.

The loneliness that DeCarava depicts in his photographs is one of sadness, but also of Otherness — an Otherness that transcends both gender and sex. The photographs are timeless and describe a universal loneliness that all black people can share in. James Baldwin, in his 1985 essay “Here be Dragons,” writes:

I hazard that the physically androgynous state must create an all-but-intolerable loneliness, since we all exist, after all, and crucially, in the eye of the beholder. We all react to and, to whatever extent, become what that eye sees. This judgment begins in the eyes of one’s parents (the crucial, the definitive, the all-but-everlasting judgment), and so we move, in the vast and claustrophobic gallery of Others, on up or down the line, to the eye of one’s enemy or one’s friend or one’s lover.

While Baldwin’s essay is centered on the idea of androgyny, the slippage of gender holds great importance in DeCarava’s work with regards to the this notion of “eye of the beholder.” As opposed to showing a reality of a loneliness felt by his subjects, he rather creates environments to express the feeling of what he sees. However, in the examples described above, each figure, in some manner, has their face concealed (even covered by scarves and sunglasses). Their faces on drawn back from the male gaze of DeCarava himself. This interplay is of great significance, for his interpretation of these figures is determined by what he can and cannot see, insofar as the figures themselves, and the viewer are drawn into the same set of circumstances. This tension reveals nothing but the pure emotions that are being “seen”: sadness, loneliness, resilience, and self-reflection.

Black genius is therefore, in terms of artistic pursuits, an ability to vacillate between the real and concrete to the unreal and abstract. In this sense, the peripatetic artist carefully uses profound imagery to move from ideas grounded in hope and truth to empower the black community. From this vantage, DeCarava is able to transform reality to describe a thought or a feeling that makes sense of the black experience. “Because it’s black and white, it’s removed from reality,” he told Terry Gross in a 1996 interview. It is DeCarava’s eye and mastery of light that uncovers his black genius — that makes his work enigmatic and timeless. In his ability to capture the beauty and darkness of everyday life, through harsh lighting and wonderful compositions, he provides truth — a transcendent truth of emotion and sheer feeling predicated on the black experience.

The post Black Genius: Roy DeCarava at Anders Wahlstedt appeared first on artcritical.

The words followed a well-worn refrain: “An unarmed, black teenager was shot and killed by police in….” Fill in the place. In this case, it was Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. Later, we heard his name: Michael Brown, 18. Brown was fatally shot by a white member of the Ferguson police department, Officer Darren Wilson. Brown was unarmed, walking in his own neighborhood, then shot at least six times by Wilson, and his body left in the street for over four hours to be seen by his friends, family and neighbors. Anger flickered into a flare. On the evening following the shooting, protesters coming from a vigil at the site of Brown’s killing were met by police with military weapons. In addition to peaceful protests, rioting and looting did occur off and on over the last month.

The ease and speed with which the police donned military armor and weapons, while supported by military vehicles, to meet fellow citizens is disturbing. These images are a warning to all American citizens. A “militarized police” (a new phrase for the common lexicon) has become a standard police action. Most recently, police used similar military weapons both during the Occupy protests and in the search for the Boston Marathon terror suspects. Lines that should be firm — between protest groups with an agenda; a search for violent, unknown terrorists; and a shocked, angry, and grieving community — have been worryingly shattered.

Before we knew Michael Brown’s name, images appeared on social media. Antonio French, an alderman from St. Louis, posted a photograph on Twitter, on August 9 at 4:55 pm. It is a strange tableau: a row of nearly all-white policemen stand on one side of a tape cordon. Their stance — legs firm, hands on their belt buckles — projects arrogance in its studied nonchalance. A lone black officer stands at the far left edge of the photograph, as if stepping out of it. A handful of black men and women sit and stand on the other side of the cordon. One man faces the police, gesturing; another looks at him with arms crossed; three men sit on the ground with their backs to the police. The monotone deportment of the policemen contrasts with the restless uncertainty among those on the other side of the tape. The contradiction in French’s comment, “Tensions are high, but the scene is peaceful in #Ferguson,” adds to the confused disquiet. David Carson, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff photographer, posted a photograph at 5:07 pm. People coming together from different places begin to head in the same direction. Carson writes: “Cops have cleared the scene of shooting in Ferguson upset crowd gathering talking about marching to police station… [sic]” In the forefront of the image a couple and child are talking together. Another woman watches the accumulating crowd. In every place along the road, people’s postures are becoming decisive.

The subsequent images of black protesters and white police are familiar. To see them is to see the marches against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963. The police relentlessly attempted to subjugate the marchers with high-pressure hoses, police dogs and arrests. Now-iconic photographs of young African-Americans, with their hands on their heads as they are sprayed with torrents of water or bitten by dogs, galvanized support for the Civil Rights movement. On August 9, 2014, at 9:04 pm, Carson posted a quadriptych: a snarling German Shepherd held back by a policeman; protesters with arms raised; a confusing but clearly agitated interaction between police and protesters; a group all looking at the place where Brown died. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized the protests of the Birmingham campaign as a series of deliberate, non-violent actions intended to challenge the laws of segregation, inevitably resulting in black youth in conflict with white police. In contrast, the protests in Ferguson began spontaneously (though they are now planned). Images of the protests first circulated through social media and then were picked up by other media outlets. Much like the protesters themselves, the images stuttered into tremendous activity. In contrast to the photographs of the Civil Rights movement, the effect of the unstructured exchange of images is harder to pinpoint. The glut of images momentarily overwhelms. How does it spur change?

The high-resolution media images of the interactions between police, protesters, and looters differ from the amateur images coming out of Ferguson. The saturated colors and sharp details produced by professionals have a sense of stability and act as part of a narrative. Scott Olson, a photographer for Getty Images, was arrested for photographing outside the designated media area. This restriction seems to violate first amendment press protections and appears completely arbitrary considering the ubiquitous presence of cellphone cameras and social media. Olson’s photograph of August 11 shows a dozen police officers in army fatigues, gas masks, and Kevlar tactical body armor, aiming rifles at a single protester with his hands over his head. Someone has graffitied, “Fuck the police” on a mailbox. The gross disparity in force is unjust in the extreme and a cause for distrust. By contrast, cellphone images bring action on the fringe into the heart. The images of looting on a loop — nighttime, fire, masked, tear gas, at the QuikTrip or Shoe Carnival — are bewildering in their daily repetition and indeterminacy. The impression, it is only that, is of indistinct violence. Cellphone photographs and films are blurred, raw, shaky and unexpected. They catch the act as it is occurring and as quickly pass it on. Chaos and panic are echoed in rapid movements, grainy stills and spontaneous utterances. The iconic images of the social media era will not have the visual clarity of Olson’s photographs, or those of Birmingham. As the ease of production and access to images increases, the idea of a single iconic photograph as an agent of change will no longer exist. Instead, it is the exchange of imagery — tweet, retweet, like, favorite — as the galvanizing action.

Of all the images to come out of Ferguson, pictures of Michael Brown himself are those that most need to be seen and valued. In a haunting video, Piaget Crenshaw, a witness to the shooting from her apartment, captured the immediate moments after Wilson shot Brown. Wilson stands, shoulders slumped, looking at Michael Brown’s body. No details can be seen clearly, heightening the shocking simplicity and tension in the aftermath of the encounter between the man and the teenage boy. However, the sequence’s broadcast on CNN distracts from its poignancy. Michaela Pereira interviews Crenshaw, sitting with her lawyer. As it played on CNN’s program New Day, the video, shot on the cellphone vertically, has to be adapted to fit the horizontal aspect ratio of the television. In the central third, Wilson paces with Brown’s blurred body. On either side, the two pillar boxes are distorted echoes. The effect is like tunnel vision. The faces of Pereira and Crenshaw join the looping film on screen to discuss what Crenshaw saw. In its raw form the video pierces; mediated by CNN (as such videos were on other cable news shows) it is surreal, even grotesque.

A much-circulated photograph of Michael Brown shows him in green and red robes for his recent high school graduation. He has a little smile and a little facial hair, both in keeping for a boy of his age. His posture is tall and straight. Officer Wilson did not see the Brown in that photograph when he shot him. Instead of an unarmed teenager, he probably “saw” someone much like the looter photographed by Carson for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That man’s face is covered and a gun sticks out of his belt. He is anonymous and threatening. Hilton Als, in his essay, “GWTW,” which addresses photographs of lynching, writes, “So much care, so much care is taken not to scare white people simply with my existence.”[1] He recounts crossing the street to avoid frightening white women, not coming up behind a neighbor at his front door, and more than one encounter with the police where he is surrounded with guns pointing at him.

Wanted (a collaboration between Harlem youth, Dread Scott, No Longer Empty, Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Kevin Blythe Sampson, and Street Attack) tackles the misperception of Black and Latino youth as criminals. Wanted posters, featuring individuals rendered anonymous except for race, were included as part of an exhibition organized by No Longer Empty, “If You Build It,” at Sugar Hill Apartments in Harlem that ran from June 25 to August 10, 2014. The posters continue to be displayed on sidewalk sheds and storefronts throughout Harlem, drawing crowds, unsure of what they are seeing at first, looking closely and reading the details. Using bureaucratic, police-like reports of “suspicious behavior,” such as walking or gesturing, they account the systemic view of Black and Latino teenagers: they are threats and they are disavowed as individuals. They are anonymous — until death. On too many occasions and in too many places, unarmed black teenagers have been threatened and/or killed by the police and armed civilians. The widespread dis-recognition of teenagers like Michael Brown is a profound social crisis and must end.

[1]Hilton Als, “GWTW,” Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 42.

The post Sharp Details, Fuzzy Lines: Images of Ferguson, MO appeared first on artcritical.