"Shutterbug?": African American Women Photographers and the Protest of Self-Representation

The role of the African American woman photographer occupied a peculiar place in the public imagination in the mid-twentieth century. For some African American men, they were the subject of fantasized sexual desire, representing feminized ideals of beauty and confidence, evidenced in the form of pin-ups. For white men, they were dangerous challenges to white supremacy who countered gendered stereotypes such as the 'mammy' or 'jezebel.' For many, the idea of African American women occupying space as professional photographers in the face of the "double jeopardy" of racism and sexism seemed impossible and inconceivable. Yet throughout the mid-twentieth century, and throughout North America and beyond, there were African American women illuminating their communities through the medium of photography. Although their lenses were typically trained on others, this paper will analyze specifically the self-representations of these women. Florestine Collins would use her image prominently in her advertisements in order to emphasize her gender in her marketing. Eslanda Goode Robeson would insert her own identity into her anthropological work in an effort to create a sense of Pan-African family in South Africa. The first African-American woman military photographer, Elizabeth "Tex" Williams, took multiple images posing with her camera and in her uniform to advocate racial pride. Utilizing these methods, these women make their bodies sites of activism, rejecting stereotypes and highlighting both their identities and their professionalism. Their adherence to a 'politics of respectability' responds to, negotiates with, and sometimes downright rejects the various idealized images which different societal agents perceived them.