Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body. Edited by Barbara Thompson, University of Washington Press with Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2008, 376 pp., 250 illus., 212 in color, notes, bibliog., index, 9 x 12 in. ISBN: Paper: 0-295-98771-5/ 978-0-295-98771-2; Cloth: 0-295-98770-7/ 978-0-295-98770-5, Paper: US $50.00, Cloth: US $75.00.
Though not strictly photography, this is the catalog of an exhibition that originated at the Hood Museum in New Hampshire earlier this year; I contributed an essay to the catalogue and images to the show (but the reproduction of my work in the catalogue is terrible–I wish someone has told me and asked me to replace the file–ugh!). I was so thrilled to see one of Maud Sulter’s images on the cover, only to be shocked soon after with news of her premature death. Overall, this is a well-illustrated catalogue with lots of terrific work. From the publisher’s site:
Explorations of contemporary art have focused on issues of identity and race for some time. Few, however, have sought to investigate these themes by juxtaposing historical and contemporary frameworks. Black Womanhood examines an especially charged icon – the black female body – and contemporary artists’ interventions upon historical images of black women as exotic Others, erotic fantasies, and supermaternal Mammies.
This book presents icons of the black female body as seen from three separate but intersecting perspectives: the traditional African, the colonial, and the contemporary global. The display and contemplation of such iconic images addresses complex and often competing forces of self-presentation and the representation of others. Peeling back layers of social, cultural, and political realities, Black Womanhood explores how historic icons inform contemporary artistic responses to the black female body through an examination of themes such as beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity, and women’s roles and power in society.
More than 200 historical and contemporary images accompany written contributions by artists, curators and scholars. This compelling volume makes a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of race, gender, and sexuality by promoting a deeper understanding of past and present readings of black womanhood, both in Africa and in the West.
Barbara Thompson is curator of African, Oceanic, and Native American collections at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. The other contributors are Ifi Amadiume, Ayo Abietou Coly, Christraud Geary, Enid Schildkrout, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Carla Williams, and Deborah Willis.
