Unit Content - An Overview
The art that I’ll be focusing on for Struggle, Defiance, and Triumph: Black Photographers and Their Magic is contemporary photography of Black photographers. I would teach this as a hybrid art history and creation course, 45 minutes of the class period exploring and analyzing the chosen photograph(s) by Black artists showing struggles, defiance, or triumph (or a combination of the above), and 45 minutes of the block in creating work inspired by or directly related to the art looked at during class. This would be a photography unit, encouraging students to use their phones as tools and not adding any filters or editing to their raw photos. The unit would cover four weeks, covering eight 90-minute class periods. The initial plan would be to address homophobia and transphobia, celebration of queer lives, police and/or domestic violence, inspiring change to global issues, and triumph over opression, but I also want to leave it open to the experiences of my students.
I plan to start this unit in February during Black Lives Matter at School week and then continue through completion. February is the perfect time for this unit, as it’s after we’ve already studied drawing, painting, sculpture, and textile craft, which leaves the students ready for a more digital approach with their phones and photography. That being said, this unit might also do well in December, when student energy is waning and families are beginning to ramp up for their winter celebrations.
The five artists, four photographers and one curator, I want to focus on for this unit are Hank Willis Thomas, Nicole Fleetwood, Zanele Muholi, Fabrice Monteiro, and Charles “Teenie” Harris. Thomas is a New York based artist1, son of Deborah Willis who is also a famous artist in her own right. Willis is a conceptual artist, and his work often deals with gender, race, and identity. Nicole Fleetwood is best known, not for her own photography, but for curating art of others. Her most famous curation is a work called “Marking Time,” which documents the lives and visions of incarcerated people2. Zanele Muholi is a Johannesburg, South Africa based photographer. They do both self-portraiture, as well as photography to document and assert the presences of the LGBTI population in South Africa. Their3 work shows queer people experiencing moments of joy, celebrating their identities, and being true to themselves. Fabrice Monteiro is a West African artist whose work focuses on issues of pollution and speaking to local populations on issues that face them4. His work combines African folklore with telling his own stories of warning to local peoples. Charles “Teenie” Harris was a Pittsburgh-born photographer who started photographing in the 1930s, and really encapsulated both Black joy and struggle in his work5. He photographed everyday occurrences and celebrations alike, such as children reading comic books, women graduating from university, and men in military uniform. His work captured memories of families, teams, folks at work, people at play, and people of all genders fighting for equal rights6.
We will study not only the photographs of others, but learn to take them ourselves. My students will learn how to use cameras, and not just the ones on their phones even though phone cameras will likely be the easiest way to do most of our work when students are not in class. We’ll learn all about lenses and exposure and zooms, aperture, different photo modes, and lighting. We will have a full-on photography unit studying different modes of photography, including how to optimize cell phone photographs. We will explore perspective, which is one of my favorite things to use in photography to make it feel more magical, as well as composition and juxtaposition. Perspective in photography is where you place the subject(s) in relation to where you’re taking the photo from. Taking a photo from above, or from a low angle is perspective. Putting an object further back to make it seem smaller and an object closer to make it seem bigger is perspective (like photos of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa: the tower is further in the background to look smaller as if the person in the foreground could actually hold it up.) Juxtaposition is what things are related to one another, what’s in the shot versus what isn’t. Having more than one subject/object in a photograph invites the viewer to make comparisons between those objects, whereas only one subject grabs the focus of the beholder. I want my students to understand that photography isn’t just what you see, and that it can be played with in subtle ways with things like perspective and juxtaposition to make some things seem larger, smaller, and more or less important and visible.
Photographs are all about documentation, and it’s up to the photographer to make that magic happen. The photographer and their camera have the control over what you get to see. The photographer controls what makes the shot and what doesn’t. They determine the angles, lighting, and planes. The photographer holds a certain amount of power to control what is and isn’t seen. I want to impart that to my students and make sure they’re using their power to empower others, not just those who are usually in the spotlight. My students will learn to make magic, to make the unseen seen and the ignored heard, with just a camera and an open mind.
The Art - The Photographers
The “official” history of Black photographers isn’t as long as it ought to be. Author and curator Deborah Willis (mother of Hank Willis Thomas) wrote many books on the topic, one of which is titled Reflections in Black: A History of Black photographers 1840 to the present7. She talks about the art of James VanDerZee, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems in addition to many others. There were no Black Artists in the history books of photography, so in 2002 this book was a revelation in the world of Black photography. She also discusses in interviews how she was told in her photography classes that she was “taking the space of a good man.8” How strange that the women, who are often the designated memory-keepers9 were being forced out of the very subject meant to document and keep memories. Gatekeeping and patriarchy in the world of professional and historical art is not new, and perhaps would make a great theme for a project under this unit, but is an entire curriculum unit in itself and can be addressed in a future unit plan. There’s a reason we know about more white and male artists in history than anyone else, and it’s not because those men were better artists than anyone else.
Then, in 2014, the documentary Through a Lens, Darkly arrived on the scene. Directed by filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris, the filmmaker discusses his relationship with Deborah Willis as a mentor and co-fighter in the battle to have Black photography seen as, real life, real joy, and making sure that the American audience of viewers saw that Black photography could show family life just like the photographs of white families that are more readily and publicly available.10 We come to the concept of the family photo album, or rather come back to it, as not just private documentation but as more public historical and cultural information.
Zanele Muholi
I intend to begin my unit with the most intense of these artists, Zanele Muholi. They are a non-binary artist based in South Africa. They describe themselves as a “visual activist,” trying to remove the sensationalizing and trauma of art that depicts the LGBTQI community. Muholi often talks11 about their photographs as a testimony or a strategy for survival, rather than as art. South African did legalize same-sex marriage in 2006, but social stigma remains strong more than 15 years later. The initial Faces and Phases project was dedicated to their friend who died of HIV-complications12.
Muholi speaks frankly about their experiences with photography: “Photography saved my life. It was the only thing that ever made sense to me. I use art as my own means of articulation. And it heals me. When I really needed therapy and I wasn’t willing to sit with a shrink, I started to take photographs.13”
Muholi openly admits that they are scared, and yet continue to make the work because it’s so necessary. Their home has been broken into, and their work stolen. “The risk we take is on a daily basis,” says Muholi, “just living, and thinking what might happen, not only to you but also your fellow activists and friends who are living their lives.14” And yet, they persist in making art of the LGBTQI community in South Africa as well as art documenting their own life as a queer person in a country where the law demands equality but that doesn’t mean that there’s real acceptance among the people as a whole.
The Faces and Phases portrait series, which I intend to show some of to my students, focuses on LGBTQI folks in South Africa, specifically how they have been given equal rights but not any protection from violence. I intend to use the teacher guide created by the Brooklyn Museum in New York to introduce this series to my students15 as well as video, titled Zanele Muholi, Visual Activist16 directed by Muholi themself about their own visual activism. Muholi’s work isn’t subtle, it hits you over the head with the point that everyone deserves joy. This is the photography I want my students to see, works of art that expose injustice, art that exploits the media right back after they’ve exploited minority populations, and photography that shows taking pride and joy in one's true self. I also want my students to see a non-binary artist in a place of power and fame, that someone who doesn’t identify with binary gender can “make it” in the world as a successful artist.
Hank Willis Thomas
After Zanele Muholi, I intend to switch gears and move to Hank Willis Thomas. Willis Thomas is an Black American artist with roots in the photographic community, his mother Deborah Willis is a famous pioneer in the field of Black photography and has written many books on the topic. Willis has a large body of work, including sculpture, immersive art and installation art, but I intend to focus on his photography for this unit in particular. There are several themes of photos that I want to address; his advertisements with all words removed (aptly called Unbranded), his juxtaposition of Black people and societal expectations, and his altered photos of quite literally branded black men.
Willis Thomas uses his “Unbranded” series to show the commodification and commercialization of ethnicity, gender and race as used to sell products17. Even this exhibit is broken into two distinct sections, one addressing white women and one giving attention to black men and women in commercial advertising. These photographs are very telling about advertising and the intended target of each advertisement and photograph. Having students guess what the advertised product is for a selection of photos from this exhibition seems like a great way to facilitate their engagement with the art. Thomas also addressed the stereotype of black men and sports, in his works like Basketball and Chain (2003,) Cotton Bowl (2011,) and Football and Chain (2011,) where he portrays big Black men as being tied to their sport and the histories therein. He goes even further in his “Branded” exhibit, where there are men with literal brands of the Nike “swoosh” on their bodies. Discussion here on commodification of black bodies and why black bodies are used in some contexts and not others would go well here with students.
This work does not embody joy or triumph in the traditional sense, but portrays more struggle and the battle to be seen as more than just a commodity to sell products or game tickets. These particular images of Thomas’ show how far the Black body, and the spirit within it, has come within the art world, and how far it still has to go. Thomas’ work is more conceptual and requires a little more inference than Muholi’s photographs, and the comparison between the two could be a lively topic of conversation for students.
The images I plan to use with my classes are Cotton Bowl, Basketball and Chain, and Football and Chain. In Cotton Bowl, Thomas juxtaposes the football field and the cotton field, with two black men in the same crouched position, facing one another. The image explores the commodification of black men, in this particular case for sports and as slaves picking cotton. Thomas specifies the words “exploitation” and “spectacle” when he discusses this piece in interviews18. Both Basketball and Chain (2003) and Football and Chain (2011) specifically don’t show the faces of the athlete who’s been “chained” to their sport as a means of spectacle. You can see the leg of the basketball player, and the arm of the football player, so you can see enough to know that they are Black, but not much else about them as people. He also has a similar photograph with a soccer (futball) player, but I find that my students will relate more to football and basketball than soccer.
Nicole Fleetwood
I also want to address Nicole Fleetwood’s project of “Marking Time: Art in an age of incarceration.” Fleetwood had an incarcerated cousin, and noticed that the photo studio in the prison was a lifeline to many of the incarcerated people and the photos gave them life and purpose19. Some of the photos taken in prison studios are not obviously in prison, and one needs to look more closely for Department of Corrections markings on the inmate’s clothing. Some of them bear no markings at all, and others are fairly obvious with DOC splashed across the shirt of the incarcerated person. There are intricate backdrops, mostly painted by incarcerated people, to make the space look less penal and more welcoming to families. These can be the most colorful spaces the incarcerated get to see inside the prison. Not only do I want to focus on her personal photos of her and her cousin in prison (in a fancy prison “studio” where photos were sold for $2-$3 dollars each,) but on the work of Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, who had work in the Marking Time exhibit.
Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick
Calhoun and McCormick are both from Louisiana, from the 9th ward of New Orleans. Among other photographic projects, the two have photographed people who are incarcerated at their local prison Angola. The majority of the prisoners there are Black men, and they are primarily photographed doing work for the prison. The project is called “Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex,” which is fitting as these men are basically performing slave labor for the prison at minimal wages for their work20.
The work embodies struggle, people fighting for themselves and their identities as human beings within the penal system that doesn’t often treat them as such21. Some of these photos call back to images of slaves working on planations with white masters over them, on their literal high horses (Who's that man on that horse, I don't know his name but they call him boss, 1980), using their freedom as a weapon to enforce labor. These people are fighting and winning struggles big and small on a daily basis, and the world has no idea because most of America doesn’t care about the prison system and the people incarcerated within it.
What’s particularly intriguing about Calhoun and McCormick’s work is the photographs they take of inmates leaving Angola prison, whether temporarily or permanently. They photograph inmates on release for family funerals, and inmates as they are released to once again become human beings that are nothing like the humans they were when they entered22. The photographs invite the viewer to have conversations about the penal system of America, about mass incarceration, and labor practices among those who cannot fight for better conditions. When slavery was abolished in the United States, that right did not and does not apply to incarcerated persons.
Fabrice Monteiro
The fourth artist I want to address with this unit was not even on my radar until Professor Roderick Ferguson brought him up in a lecture to the entire Yale National Initiative community, and I was instantly drawn in. Fabrice Monteiro is an artist originally from Belgium, raised in Benin, and his art intertwines ideas of animism and prophecy into awareness of the dangerous side effects of over-consumption. Basically, he shows “pollution monsters” that come alive to speak prophecy23 about the harms that the global community is doing to the lands and waters of the world. He calls these images “djinns,” and holds that they were sent by the Mother Earth to deliver messages and warnings about the dangers of consumption culture24. Montiero’s art speaks volumes to the effects that photography can have on the world, as well as the raw effect it can have on the viewer.
I want my students to be able to see the art of Monteiro both as being uncomfortable with the very things that give them comfort in their lives, and to bring them to the realization that art can make real change. A slaughterhouse in Africa actually stopped their ocean-dumping after the exhibition of this series.
Charles “Teenie” Harris
Charles “Teenie” Harris got his beginnings as a photographer for the The Pittsburgh Courier, and continued as their staff photographer for over 40 years. He took many portraits in his hometown, and didn’t have much need to go beyond to find great photographs25. Harris was often called “One Shot,” as he rarely had his subjects retake a photo26. In the 1930s, 1940s, and the early 1950s, Harris had a photography studio that he worked from, in addition to freelancing for the Courier. In the 1940s and 1950s, he also photographed many famous actors and musicians who came through Philadelphia. Those artists include, but are not limited to: Harry Belefonte, Lena Horne, Fredi Washington, Leroy Brown, and Duke Ellington27. Deborah Willis, famous author, NYC photography professor, and mother of Hank Willis Thomas, credits Harris as the “photographer who helped preserve African-American culture from family life to social life.28” Harris’ work was not well known outside of Pittsburgh until after his passing in 1998.
The photographs from Teenie Harris are so numerous, but I chose a few as a starting point. I want students to look at Two Young Women Eating Caramel Apples 1940-1945, Protestors with UNPC signs outside United Mine Safety Appliance, Braddock Avenue, October 1963, and Duke Ellington at a piano with dancer Honey Coles and Billy Strayhorn looking on, in the Stanley Theatre, 1942-194329. These three photographs are very different from one another, but all come back to the idea that everyday joy, struggle, and triumph are common occurrences in all communities. The first photograph of the women eating caramel apples shows unbridled joy at the small things, everyday moments that make people smile, moments that make people relatable. Protestors with UNPC signs show that not every part of life is rosy and bright, sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in and take to the streets to fight with your feet. Lastly, the photograph with Duke Ellington is a candid photo during downtime. The musicians and dancer are relaxed and comfortable, enjoying a few moments backstage. Harris’ subjects were so comfortable with him that they were able to get shots like these to preserve the moments of joy in music30.
The Art - Taking Photographs
We don’t have cameras in my studio (yet), and as we try to acquire them we’re going to keep our focus on cell phone based photography. Cell phones in 2022, and even a few years earlier, have come a long way in their ability to take high quality and high resolution photographs. Even an amatuer can take beautiful photographs with a phone, using some simple techniques and tricks.
Focus
Focus and theme are, in my opinion, the most important things in photography. Making a conscious choice of what you want to take a photo of is the first step, and then deciding what is in, or out, of focus is the next step. Deciding what to include, and specifically not to include, is key in using photography as expression and using photographs for a purpose beyond expression. Most phone cameras will auto-focus when you tap on the subject of the photo, which can be useful at times.
Rule of Thirds
From there we move into the Rule of Thirds, which divides the photo plane into 9 equal parts using two horizontal and two vertical lines. By this rule, major focus points should be at the intersections of those lines. However, this is not a hard and fast rule, and once mastered can be played with and even intentionally defied and ignored.
Exposure and Light
From there we move on to exposure, which is how much light is allowed into the photo lens. Exposure can be manually adjusted using basic camera phone apps, and phone cameras will often try to adjust the exposure for you based on what it perceives. It’s easy enough to adjust exposure to create more or less light in a photo to get the mood and expression that’s desired in any given photo. Students who are comfortable with the camera at this point can continue to explore aperture (the opening of the lens), ISO (which is the sensitivity measure of light for the camera) and shutter speed (how fast the shutter of the camera opens and closes).
Practice
Once students have the basics down, the best thing they can do is practice. Take photos of people, places, people in places, one person, many people, people of varying closeness, lots of photos of a wide range of subjects and objects to practice all of these ideas. Allowing students to discover tips and tricks on their own and share them with their peers is a great idea for high schoolers, as they’re often more receptive to ideas from their classmates than ideas from their teachers. They might figure out things like steadying the camera on a hard surface, using a tripod or other device to hold the phone, using the timer function, and even taking photos from other angles than straight on. If students haven’t figured these out by halfway through the course, then they can be explicitly taught.
Using a Camera
As we manage to slowly obtain cameras for our studio, thanks to grants and donations from kind strangers, we’ll begin to look into camera features like aperture, how fast the shutter clicks, and optical zoom,when the camera lens itself zooms, as opposed to digital zoom which reduces image quality. We’ll look at software to transfer photographs from the camera, and also from student phones, onto computers or even directly to printers if we can get such devices.
Curating the Final Pieces
The last step of this unit will be having the students curate their own gallery of their photos. Students will learn to sort photos by theme, and look at other photo galleries for inspiration on how they might want to arrange their gallery. Each class of students will create their own gallery space, meaning we will have between three and six galleries to show by the end of this unit.
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