Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography

New York: The New Press, 1994. Q5- A first edition (complete numberline) hardcover book SIGNED and inscribed by Deborah Willis to previous owner on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has wrinkling and crease on the edges and corners, scattered light rubbing and scratches, tanning and light shelf wear. Book has some bumped corners, foxing on the page edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.25"x6.25", 209 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. As each year ushers in the publication of more books featuring African Americans and as the number of images of African Americans in magazines, in movies, and on TV continues to increase, Picturing Us is a welcome and long-overdue examination of how these images should be interpreted. Deborah Willis, the country's foremost expert on African Americans photography, asked seventeen writers, critics, and film makers to select a photograph of personal or historical significance and to "read" it for insights into the black experience. while some of the contributors write about family portraits - for instance, bell books and E. Ethelbert Miller write about their fathers 0 others have selected photographs of a more public and political nature: Jacquie Jones zooms in on lynchings while Robert Hill analyzes a famous picture of Marcus Garvey in a procession. The photographs and essays in this collection take the reader from the "great black migration" to the Harlem Renaissance, from musings about black female subjectivity in art to the objectification of the black male in the white American psyche. Even the analyses of family portraits convey a broad sense of African American history. Thus a picture in which family members are arranged lightest to darkest represents more than happenstance: reminding us that the black community has been divided by gradations of color since slavery, the snapshot becomes a visual acknowledgement of the unspoken rift. Riveting and timely, Picturing Us is a book no one concerned with race, representation, or photography can afford to miss. . Signed by Author. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.