Thomas Allen Harriss Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is a PHENOMENAL!!!! Film experience!!! Currently screening in NYC - Film Forum until at least Sept. 9th. In the coming weeks & months the film is slated to be screened in Chicago, Columbus, OH, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, & Baltimore. Inspired by Deborah Williss book, Reflections in Black, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY (Willis is also a co-producer) casts a broad net that begins with filmmaker Thomas Allen Harriss family album. It considers the difference between black photographers who use the camera to define themselves, their people, and their culture and some white photographers who, historically, have demeaned African-Americans through racist imagery. The film embraces both historical material (African-Americans who were slaves, who fought in the Civil War, were victims of lynchings, or were pivotal in the Civil Rights Movement) and contemporary images made by such luminaries as Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems. The film is a cornucopia of Americana that reveals deeply disturbing truths about the history of race relations while expressing joyous, life-affirming sentiments about the ability of artists and amateurs alike to assert their identity through the photographic lens. Note: The Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow is an interactive project that ties-in with the film. For more details, go to 1World1Family.me. ============================ a resource and a metaphor” for the African amerikkkan experience from 1840! A magnificently skillful “cornucopia of African Americana” of how Black photographers have used the camera to define themselves, our people and our culture. It penetrates that OUR family, professional, etc. photos are not diminished by the incessant attempts of white photographers to viciously demean African-Americans through racist “collective, soul damaging” imagery. Filmmaker Harris’ central thesis is that “the humanity, the full membership of African-Americans in the larger” u.s, is what has undergirded the work of African american photographers. A wonderful!!, engaging Photo-Essay tour de force of a treasure trove of countless stunning photographs unearthed from countless sources – a research feat unmatched except by Deborah Willis’ groundbreaking and thorough excavation of the vital and neglected African American photographic tradition, - from the Jules Lion the first African American professional photographer who first set up shop in New Orleans in 1840, to the near present-day. Inspiring warm aspects of being wonderfully “Black” that intersect almost karmically with the horror of the current-events police MURDERS of SEVERAL young Afrcan American men, as we collectively formulate strategies to prevent these horrors and the very important roles of documentations of these horrors and the refutation of those corporate media “images that pathologize and dehumanize young black men.” I instinctively reflected on the calvacade of the film’s family photos with my own memories. Film-goers learn that - Frederick Douglass, “the most photographed American of the 19th century,” brilliantly recognized the value of his image to African liberation; and contrasts the dignity and truth of the “American Negro” photographic exhibition at the 1900 Paris World Fair with the obscene white-supremacist zoo-like denigration of African-Descended people in other parts of the same fair and the attendant horror that Europe and later the u.s. were then and since reigning upon African Peoples. I was moved to tears – several times – of love – by Gordon Parks’ 1942 ‘Ella Watson American Gothic;’ and his searing, dignified, penetrating photos of working and poor African americans, especially children, and by the beautiful multi-generational family photos; and then in rage – xxx the lynching photos of RACIST whites partying with their children at the feet of African americans they had burned, tortured to death> Also see: --- ; --- ‘Through a Lens Darkly’ debuts in NYC, by Lapacazo Sandoval | 8/21/2014, 5:43 p.m. amsterdamnews/news/2014/aug/21/through-lens-darkly-debuts-nyc/ --- NY Times Review: “a family memoir, a tribute to unsung artists and a lyrical, at times heartbroken, meditation on imagery and identity ………. an inexhaustibly fascinating subject” .........
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 18:13:15 +0000
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