Overview

Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly inquiry and contemporary art, this book addresses these misconceptions and fills in the gaps that exist in the photographic representation of Black motherhood, mothering, and mutual care within Black communities. The essays and interviews, paired with a curated selection of images, address the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and in particular its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture - primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. This collection, then, challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal stories, history, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration. This visual exploration of Black motherhood through pictures made by Black woman-identifying photographers thus serves as a reflection of the past and a portal to the future and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexity of Black life and Black joy. This book emerges from the project Women Picturing Revolution. For more information, visit womenpicturingrevolution.com Contributing authors: Tomi Akitunde (founder and editor-in-chief of mater mea), Grace Aneiza Ali (New York University), Emily Brady (University of Nottingham), Lesly Deschler Canossi (Women Picturing Revolution), Nicole J. Caruth (independent curator), Haile Eshe Cole (University of Connecticut), Atalie Gerhard (Saarland University), Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley College), Rachel Lobo (York University), Zoraida Lopez-Diago (Women Picturing Revolution), Salamishah Tillet (Rutgers University), Scheherazade Tillet (A Long Walk Home), Brie McLemore (University of California, Berkeley), Renee Mussai (Autograph London), Marly Pierre-Louis (independent curator), Jonathan Michael Square (Parsons School of Design), Susan Thompson (independent curator), Jennifer Turner (Hollins University), Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University), Rhaisa Kameela Williams (Princeton University) Contributing artists: Nydia Blas, Samantha Box, Renee Cox, Andrea Chung, Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, vanessa german, Ayana V. Jackson, Lebohang Kganye, Deana Lawson, Qiana Mestich, Marcia Michael, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Keisha Scarville, Mickalene Thomas, Mary Sibande, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Willis.

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Reviews

This edited volume contributes to recent projects centering Black reproductive rights and practices of care in Black communities on a practical and scholarly level. With the focus on photography and representation, the anthology provides a focus that is in its scope underrepresented and underexplored. The mixture of interviews, academic essays, poetry, interviews and other forms of writing and carefully curated color plates at the end of the volume provide not only a refreshing and innovative format to cover the wide and diverse range of approaches but also provides an important methodological contribution to existing scholarship. Henriette Gunkel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum The publication of Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing is an invaluable resource that makes space for the experiences and stories of motherhood to be examined and celebrated. This discussion of Black matrilineage in photography consciously moves away from the controlling images that have limited representations of Black motherhood in popular culture. It also enhances not only the discourse around the history of photography but shows the potential for the mainstream to open up new pathways for the representation of Black motherhood that can affect change across various systems and hopefully improve real-life conditions for Black mothers. Jennifer S. Musawwir, Daily Art Magazine, 27 February 2023, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/black-matrilineage/ This sprawling open-access volume brings together texts by artists, curators, and scholars whose backgrounds span the fields of history, Africana studies, sociology, and visual culture. The result is an equally expansive breadth of approaches to the conjuncture of blackness and the maternal... While this multiplicity makes 'Black Matrilineage' challenging to wrestle into a single narrative, it is ultimately a strength for how the volume should be used: as a reference text for readers and educators to engage with specific topics of blackness and the maternal - Megan Driscoll, Woman’s Art Journal, Fall / Winter 2023 Volume 44, Number 2

This edited volume contributes to recent projects centering Black reproductive rights and practices of care in Black communities on a practical and scholarly level. With the focus on photography and representation, the anthology provides a focus that is in its scope underrepresented and underexplored. The mixture of interviews, academic essays, poetry, interviews and other forms of writing and carefully curated color plates at the end of the volume provide not only a refreshing and innovative format to cover the wide and diverse range of approaches but also provides an important methodological contribution to existing scholarship. Henriette Gunkel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum The publication of Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing is an invaluable resource that makes space for the experiences and stories of motherhood to be examined and celebrated. This discussion of Black matrilineage in photography consciously moves away from the controlling images that have limited representations of Black motherhood in popular culture. It also enhances not only the discourse around the history of photography but shows the potential for the mainstream to open up new pathways for the representation of Black motherhood that can affect change across various systems and hopefully improve real-life conditions for Black mothers. Jennifer S. Musawwir, Daily Art Magazine, 27 February 2023, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/black-matrilineage/

Author Information

Lesly Deschler Canossi is a photography educator, cultural producer and co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution. She is faculty at the International Center of Photography, New York. Zoraida Lopez-Diago stands at the intersection of visual, social, and environmental justice; she is a photographer, independent curator, activist, and co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution.

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