Seeing photography more fully.
We readily recognise generations of Black musicians as originators and innovators. Photography has not developed the same habit of recognition, leaving a striking question about who gets remembered as having changed the medium.
History remembers those who changed the world. Family photographs remember those who changed us.
Ming Smith's work reminds us that the gaze is not simply about what appears within the frame. It shapes what photographers recognise as meaningful before the camera is ever raised.
Photography has often spoken as though it possessed one universal way of seeing. The Black gaze begins with a different proposition: every way of seeing begins somewhere.
We readily recognise generations of Black musicians as originators and innovators. Photography has not developed the same habit of recognition, leaving a striking question about who gets remembered as having changed the medium.
History remembers those who changed the world. Family photographs remember those who changed us.
Every photograph acquires a history of its own. But the history of the image is not the same as the history of the person within it.
Ming Smith's work reminds us that the gaze is not simply about what appears within the frame. It shapes what photographers recognise as meaningful before the camera is ever raised.
Photography has often spoken as though it possessed one universal way of seeing. The Black gaze begins with a different proposition: every way of seeing begins somewhere.
