This is a snap shot of bell hooks and a fan, taken circa 1970s. I tried to find a picture of her father, in order to help hone the image she intricately describes in her piece, "In Our Glory". Snap shots are intended to convey a moment that won't be forgotten. Sometimes the individuals in the picture are caught off guard, looking away from the lens, not smiling--or the opposite, gleaming! Snap shots take the image of the person, right there, in that moment, and that's all you get to see as the beholder of the image. bell hooks, in this photo is gleaming with her subject, humbly signing a book that she authored, and this moment in time, is all we get. We don't get to know the background of this image; where it was taken, why it was taken (was there another reason?), what day it was taken.
The fleetingness is romantic to bell hooks, when she describes the photograph of her father, looking young and fit. But she is saddened when he disgraces the images of himself because he has dark skin. But she qualifies her discontentment by stating,
"Cameras gave to black folks, irrespective of our class, a means by which we could participate fully in the production of images...contemporary commodification of blackness creates a market context wherein conventional, even stereotypical, modes of representing blackness may receive the greatest reward. This leads to a cultural context in which images that would subvert the status quo are harder to produce. There is no 'perceived market' for them."
I felt this image was appropriate for such a statement because of its elusiveness.
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