Does photography have a particular relationship to the real? Most of us assume it does. Unlike images made by hand—paintings, for example—photographs seem to provide an objective record of what was directly in front of the camera at a particular time and place. For African Americans, who have not always had access to the means of representation or the freedom to define and distribute their own images, photography’s assumed realism has been a crucial part of efforts to gain visibility and to replace negative and damaging images with more positive ones. For Louis Draper, who grew up in segregated Richmond, Virginia, in the 1930s and ’40s, navigating these expectations about photography’s realism posed a unique challenge. Check out this great article at: http://surl.li/dcdft
