Information & discussion about African diaspora photographers and publishing.
Haiku in my Neighborhood. Poems by Dee Dee McNeil, photographs by Roland Charles, M. Hanks Gallery, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9821810-1-0, $25.00.
(Pages from the book are viewable at Google Books online.)
Haiku in my Neighborhood – a coffee table book of 50 haiku poems written by jazz singer/songwriter Dee Dee McNeil with photographs by noted photographer-artist and arts activist Roland Charles. The haiku poems were matched to the photographs creating a unique language and visual experience.
The Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack” (”Le Journal Érotique d’un Bûcheron”). artist’s book by Barthélémy Toguo with 12 linocuts and texts, 38 x 26.5 cm, Michael Woolworth Editions, Paris, 1000€.
Angaza Afrika: African Art Now. Chris Spring, Laurence King, 350 colour illustrations,256 x 226mm, 336 pages, paperback, ISBN – 978 1 85669 548 0, £25.
Angaza Afrika: African Art Now, by Chris Spring and published by Laurence King brings together more than 60 of Africa’s most creative contemporary artists, drawn from across the African continent as well as from Europe, North America, the Caribbean and South America.
Winner of The Art Book Award 2009
The mission of this book is to illustrate Africa’s immensely fertile artistic landscape. Africa has emerged from its colonial past and is asserting its own identity. African art is not only confined to the continent itself, but has spread world-wide through the work of those descended from the enforced migrations of the slave trade and those who have more recently left their homes in Africa to take their place on an international stage.
Judges’ comments:
The Editorial Board of The Art Book and the Association of Art Historians have announced Angaza Afrika as the winner of The Art Book Award 2009. Angaza Afrika: African Art Now provides a feast for the eye, matching extensive colour illustrations with clear, contemporary book design. With a wealth of information on lesser-known artists and practices, this book makes a much-needed and valuable addition to resources on the diverse visual cultures of Africa. All in all, an appealing and accessible publication which highlights the complexities, richness and vibrancy of contemporary African art.
Black Venus 2010: They Called Her “Hottentot”. Edited by Deborah Willis. Temple University Press, 288p, ISBN 978-1-4399-0205-9, $34.95.
Publishers Weekly Jan 4 2010 review:
Her name was Sarah Baartman. Born in South Africa in 1789, she died in Paris in 1815—after five years of being displayed (sometimes in a cage) for entertainment and “scientific study”; her pickled buttocks and genitalia remained on public display at the Musée de l’Homme until 1974 and her remains were finally returned to South Africa in 2002. During her period of fame and exploitation, she was known as the “Hottentot Venus.” Willis (Posing Beauty) offers a comprehensive, inclusive, and coherently organized anthology that embraces “scholarly and lyrical, historical and reflexive” responses to Baartman, as a woman, as a black woman, as an object, as an icon, as an inspiration to creative artists, and as a catalyst to scholars. The book moves from Baartman’s life and times to an assessment of the figure of the “Hottentot Venus” in contemporary art and a broader consideration of the historic public display of black women. Appended is a photo gallery that is as essential and diverse as the texts. This remarkable volume satisfies the academic reader with scholarly essays and moves the general reader with its creative expression, making it fascinating and accessible to any one. (Mar.)
African Americans and the Haitian Revolution. Selected Essays and Historical Documents. Edited by Maurice Jackson, Jacqueline Bacon, Routledge, October 2009, 272 pages, Paperback (also available in Hardback), ISBN: 978-0-415-80376-2, $39.95.
About the Book
Bringing together scholarly essays and helpfully annotated primary documents, African Americans and the Haitian Revolution collects not only the best recent scholarship on the subject, but also showcases the primary texts written by African Americans about the Haitian Revolution. Rather than being about the revolution itself, this collection attempts to show how the events in Haiti served to galvanize African Americans to think about themselves and to act in accordance with their beliefs, and contributes to the study of African Americans in the wider Atlantic World.
Reviews
“This is a timely and enterprising collection that answers a growing need to set African American history in a broader international context. It combines essays that are diverse in approach with a wide-ranging selection of documents.”
David Patrick Geggus, co-editor of The World of the Haitian Revolution
“The chapters and documents presented in this edited volume deliver the goods in rich abundance as promised in its title, through deeply probing exploration of important connections between people of African descent in the United States of America and the history and legacy of the Haitian Revolution. The central significance of that upheaval, when slaves freed themselves in the Caribbean, cannot be overstated for its wide range of impact on the consciousness of enslaved and oppressed blacks in America. African Americans and the Haitian Revolution offers fresh insight and opens up many windows into the role of the historically fascinating and extremely complex world of the Haitian Revolution in shaping the African diaspora.”
David Barry Gaspar, author of A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean
“Amidst a spate of exciting new work on U.S. perceptions of the Haitian Revolution, this work stands out — not simply for the novelty and quality of the scholarship it contains, but also for its efficacy for the classroom. Here, first-rate historical analysis combines with excellent historical editing to offer students the single best volume that can be found on its topic. Highly recommended.”
Patrick Rael, author of African-American Activism before the Civil War: A Reader on the Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North
carlagirl photo