Dark Continent: Only Half the Picture

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Only Half the Picture

We have wonderful guests here this weekend. All are artists and all are well worth paying attention to. Thursday afternoon, our dear friend, Clarissa Sligh, came by to stay until Sunday. She’s based in Philadelphia and North Carolina and has had quite a distinguished career as an art photographer. She’s done so many different kinds of projects, from documenting Jake in transition, to the Masculinity Project to an exposé on incest, Reframing the Past. She has a great website here. Note that the opening photo was taken by my girl, Ellen Eisenman [http://ellenfoto.blogspot.com/ ].

Second on the scene was Zanele Muholi, a new friend and a fantastic young photographer from South Africa. Google her and check her out here. We have had very intense discussions about being a black lesbian in South Africa and the recent history of black feminism here in the US. Her book, Only Half the Picture, published by Michael Stevenson in 2006, can be found on Amazon.com.

In the book, Pumia Dineo Gqola writes a moving essay, “Through Zanele Muholi’s eyes: Re/imagining ways of seeing Black lesbians.”

Paying attention to Muholi’s images requires grappling with the competing and nuanced meanings highlighted in the represented subjects. They underline the importance of seeing the agency—life choices, decisions, failures, confusions, discoveries, rejections—of the Black lesbian in the picture…. These images are shaped by, respond to, and sometimes start off from circulating ideas about Black South African lesbians. Muholi’s vision holds challenges for all of us who claim to see (Black) lesbian sexuality regardless of whether we do so in the interest of transformation or oppression…. Muholi’s work contains new insights for all audiences who respond to her invitation to think about lesbian lives seriously” [p. 84].

The series [“Period”] normalizes Black lesbians as women. It positions the most reviled women through images of the most abhorrent—albeit normal—aspect of women’s lives. It shows Black lesbians bleeding uncontrollably, messily and stickily, like the rest of ‘us’. Muholi’s normalizing of Black lesbian sexuality positions it as part of the continuum of women’s sexuality at the same time that she plays with notions of what is ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ [p. 86].

I find myself looking at only bits and pieces of the book at a time because nearly every photo causes me to think and feel so much.

Finally, Gabi Ngcobo showed up after 12AM. Our weekend guests had all arrived. More on her in the next entry.

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Academic Biography

Professor White's first book, Sierra Leone’s Settler Women Traders: Women on the Afro-European Frontier, was winner of the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Price in 1987. Her book with Iris Berger, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History, has become a standard reference text and has been translated into Japanese. Her most recent book is Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. She has been named a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and a Mellon Scholar and has received a Kidder-Peabody Grant for research in The Gambia. Her appointments have included chair of the Five College Black Studies Executive Committee and member of the Graduate Faculty of the University of Massachusetts. She has a B.A. from Wheaton College, an M.A. in African history, and a Ph.D. in history from Boston University.

Along with her teaching and scholarly career, she has had a distinguished career in academic administration. At NYU, she was appointed Vice Provost in 2005. She advised the Provost on faculty appointments, tenure, and promotion. She worked closely with the Faculty Senators Council to enhance work-life conditions for faculty. She also spearheaded the university’s efforts to diversify the faculty and has responsibility for the Office of Academic Appointments, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Faculty Resource Network, a faculty development consortium of 52 institutions of higher education.

From 1998 to 2005, Professor White was dean of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she greatly increased the school’s visibility and reputation. From 2001-05, she was chair of NYU’s Deans Council. Prior to coming to NYU, she was a professor of history and Black studies at Hampshire College, where she also served as Dean of the School of Social Science and Dean of Faculty. While completing her Ph.D. at Boston University, she was an instructor at the University of Sierra Leone and a research assistant at the Afro-American Studies Center at Boston University.