BLACK MOVING IMAGE ASSOCIATION ©

[black-banjee-baltimore-bred]

On Iconography 

by kyle vincent scott

As we think deeply about the stretching our imaginations beyond contrite black experiences, there is a certain longing that incurs within the psyche. In many regards, the aesthetic architecture of “black style” has traditionally been wrapped up in a capitalist understanding of creative expression. The African American style, as consumed globally, is understood simply in relation to urban streetwear. Afro picks, fronts, and even Air Jordans have an almost indestructible monopoly around the iconographic expression of black culture. While these objects are sacred in that they very much are central to an era our collective history, the mass media has a tendency to use them as a ubiquitous means of shrinking black cultural production. In essence, it is easier for our culture as a whole to celebrate iconography that is directly related to capitalism. The Air Force One for instance has an equal importance to Nike in that it is one of their highest grossing shoe as it does to the largely black and brown communities wherein which the shoe holds a certain level of cultural significance. However, as black people continue to gain access to more means and more control over their storytelling, it is important to think critically about the other symbols that often go unrecognized in relation to our heritage. It would be deeply diminutive to refer to slavery as tending to the land, there is a great deal of history buried in American soil that pertains to the legacy of the black diaspora. In a vain, that isn’t completely dissimilar to that of Indigenous peoples, African American history is bound up in the geopolitical landscape of the United States. Phenomenon such as food desserts, which plague black communities specifically have long been reflective of the industrial distancing of black people from the land their ancestry was forced tend to. Therefore, the photographic work of Bria Hamlett in a multitude of ways wrestles with the black imaginary as pertaining to contemporary consumption outside of a traditional economic framework. Photography in the age of social media, is a practice that is largely devoured. The average person is confronted with hundreds of images throughout any given day. And in response, it is expected that the modern day photographer produces triple fold, in effort to assuage the appetites of the masses. Hamlett’s practice in contrast, is reflective of a profound level of patience. The imagery not only refreshing, but it also provides viewers with the opportunity to ask themselves internally what it is exactly that Hamlett herself is offering to you. These questions of offering as connected to notions of masculinity and femininity are welcome in that they bend and warp the traditional notions of who bears what and who has the power to construct and build. In her series, Rooted, Hamlett aptly juxtaposes black men against both urban and agrarian backdrops, almost directly challenging the notion of “natural habitats.” In constructing a world that includes both the elements of the metropolitan in addition to the agricultural, the audience is able to question what it is exactly we expect from photography constructed around the black masculine. Through queering the concept of “being a product of your environment,” the audience is able to see the work that the black women and femmes do in regard to seeing black men deeply both in spaces that are commonplace as well as in spaces that they are regally denied. The series is in truth a rumination on the synchronicity of discovering and being discovered in a manner that is divorced from colonial subjugation.

[black-banjee-baltimore-bred]

Susan Smith-Pinelo, Sometimes

by kyle vincent scott

Susan Smith-Pinelo’s Sometimes (1999) is a single channel video scored to ‘Workin’ Day and Night’ (1979) by Michael Jackson. In an effort to conjure questions both around the perception of blackness and the function of femininity in a racially abject space, Smith-Pinelo rather directly uses cleavage as a conduit for a larger conversation around class and the hilarity of gender performance. The viewer is presented with a claustrophobic view of what the female body is most regularly reduced to: breasts. After watching the subject adjust her shirt, as if presently in front of a mirror, she proceeds to contort her breast along to the beat of the song. They bounce and shake, almost hypnotically, directing the viewer's gaze to what, in most public social environments, is forbidden to be surveilled. In a world of male domination, the very notion of women revealing their bodies, as a culturally understood phenomenon is a space of precarity. For many of us, either male or female identifying, the public sphere is a space in which we are regularly stripped of the autonomy to control our viewership. The very moment that we exit our homes, our bodies become something else entirely. Rather than these tangible extensions of our own singular identities, our physical selves take the shape of currency almost, in that they welcome a myriad of experiences relating to work, commerce, interpersonal relationships, as well as cultural exchange. What we more personally know as flesh, in communion with the metropolitan, transforms oftentimes into a more symbolic or representational form of selfhood. The dominant racist, social frameworks present within the United States regularly re-code the individual being to be understood through its connection to a larger collective. Our elbows and shoulders, which within the confines of our homes are to be rubbed and caressed, become communal almost – objects that could be bumped into, lusted over, laughed at, etc. Traditionally speaking, for women there is often this balancing act of wanting to celebrate and showcase the body while wrestling deeply with the understanding that this act could be misinterpreted. When first engaging the video, phrases like “eyes up here” are immediately pulled to the forefront of the viewers mind, nevertheless; the artist rather audaciously rejects that even as a possibility. We are made to sit uncomfortably in the strange embarrassment that arises when consuming “sexual content” in the presence of others. In a manner that isn’t dissimilar to accidentally swiping past your own nude photography while in line for a movie, the piece evokes the flush like feeling that infects us when the line between private and public becomes abstracted. Is it better to laugh and embrace the shock of someone seeing something that maybe they shouldn’t have? Or is it more courageous to be confident in the existence of a version of the self that maybe is as regularly offered center stage within our everyday lives? Smith-Pinelo hones both the rigidity and oddity of gender and sexuality while one of our deeply troubled cultural icons bellows out in the background. As a people, navigating towards a future that is free of the sexual subjugation of slavery, we have in a multitude of ways found ourselves at these very particular impasses. Wanting to be fiercely in control of the narrative of our own sexuality and passion, while simultaneously being aware of the history of sexual violence and neglect that has filled so many of our lives. What is to be said of a past sexual awakening scored to that of the tune of R. Kelly in that it is only in our retrospective awareness that we begin to unpack the ramifications of those instances? Is a first kiss seen as sinister if it was born in the low hum Bump n’ Grind? Or do we look at the inception of life differently in that maybe it occurred in a motel at Freanknik or on the backseat of a stranger’s car? In speaking of her work, Smith-Pinelo is specifically looking to add a layer of humor to how contrived and unimaginative the pressures of gendered expectations can be — especially in that, we walk away from the work knowing that the subject is a black woman, holding true the racial, socio-economic, and interpersonal complexities that such an identity can withhold, and yet we only have an infinitesimal glimpse of her exterior. We have the markers to understand that society might be disinterested in knowing who this woman really is and we, regardless of gender, are confronted with whether or not we do the work of perpetuating that erasure. And through this limited scope, Smith-Pinelo provides the viewer with a question of the “male gaze” without the inherent presence of a “man.” As we plainly watch this woman shake her breast on camera, we are forced to ask ourselves who exactly is the powerful force behind objectification? bell hooks and other feminist theorists have critiqued the notion that feminism is a direct translation of all women being labeled as victims, and within hooks’ framework we are to understand that Sometimes looks to ask where exactly women and femmes pick up the torch in regard to their own oppression and sexual objectification. And if the girl gaze was all that we needed to be free, then why weren’t we free yet?

[black-banjee-baltimore-bred]

Your support allows us to continue in our efforts to provide instances of healing throughout our black communities. 

We, as an organization, believe that images are gateways to new realities. And we invite you to be a part of our journey as we look to explore what those realities may look like. link to our gofundme

Thank you <3