Narratives of Hank Willis Thomas’s Photography ｜ MoMA Online Course：Seeing Through Photographs

Among all the courses, week 5 “Constructing Narratives & Challenging Histories” resonated with me the most. We learn about how narratives of a photograph were constructed by photographers, institutions, or people who involved in the presentation. By looking into what is behind a photograph and how choices were made into image composition, context description, or re-presented display, viewing photographs as a reflection of truth needs to be questioned. We get to understand the narratives constructed by whom, why they made those decisions, what messages they intended to convey, and how the viewers would be influenced.

In week 5’s featured photographs, I select two photographs that I am interested in the most. Both of them are from Hank Willis Thomas’s UNBRANDED: Reflections in Black by Corporate America (2006-present) series －－ Jungle Fever (1991/2007) and We Are On Our Way (1970/2008). In the UNBRANDED series, Hank Willis Thomas intently removed the text and logos from the image, leading the viewers to go back into the image and read the meanings in itself.

Hank Willis Thomas. Jungle Fever. 1991/2007.

LightJet print. 35 x 30”.

Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

(Picture resource: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/841258405364226540/)

When looking at Jungle Fever, I tried not to connect it with the movie characters but focusing on the photograph itself. In the middle and almost full-width of the picture, two hands are holding together. The color of their skin contrasts, which we can associate with a connection between two people of different races. Also, notice the red nail polish on the White’s skinny fingers, we can also guess her gender, the class she came from, the occasion she might involve at the moment, what was the relationship between her and the black fingers’ owner? If they were couples, what might they encounter in 1991 (the year this photograph was made)? Why did the director (or photographer, or anyone who made this photograph) make their hands lied on the white woman’s pale skin? Why not chose the black skin as a background instead? We can assume that, from their holding hands, it somehow reflected the increasing numbers of interracial marriage at that time, or maybe it was the director’s intention trying to popularize the romance relationship among different races. With the White’s skin as the whole background, it probably showed the trend of advertising images at the moment; as the production of advertising, this photograph still had its commercial purpose, the people who produced this picture still needed to put the public’s favorable taste into consideration. In my assumption, the pale skin was the main part of the whole picture, making the White a predominance, perhaps to be more acceptable by the “mainstream audience”; meanwhile, making the Black more conspicuous, as if it was an iconic achievement that worth an emphasize.

Hank Willis Thomas. We Are On Our Way. 1970/2008.

LightJet print. 56 1/4 x 50 1/2”.

Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

(Picture resource: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/186990)

In We Are On Our Way, there were Black and White people sitting in the seats of public transportation or a public area. From the role they were depicted, outfits they were dressed in, the juxtaposition they sit, eyesights, and smile they posed to each other, we can tell that it was a harmonious and beautiful scene built by producers behind. Details in a photograph may not completely reflect the truth of history, but from the photograph, we can see how people desire to show their self-image to others, how they build their narratives within composition and atmosphere, and what pushes them to make their decisions. In this photograph, we don’t know whether those people knew each other, except in the front row there seemed to be two mothers and their daughters. While men traveled on their own, women carried their children with them. We can’t infer this as a common phenomenon then, but there must be some reasons which affected the producers to make this choice, and such a situation was depicted. Another noticeable point is that everyone was well dressed, it turned out that one of the intentions of the producers, making them seemed to live a wealth and happy life; besides, their friendly and polite interactions, as well as the whole atmosphere are another remarkable part in this picture. To some degree, they might fail to show the truth in history, however, both of them revealed an ideal vision in that time, calling for equality and human rights among different races. In 1970 (the year this photograph was produced), no matter how far this ideal vision went in the reality, it accomplished itself in the world of advertising, as if travelers in the photograph who were on their way, heading to an ideal world with a sense of hope.

Without the text and logos, we tend to read photographs themselves, looking into how they were made under a specific cultural, political, commercial lens by an individual or a group, sometimes to cause stereotypical or over-simplify problems. When the text involves, it will also create a new context and bring up a new dialogue between images and texts.

To sum up, week 5 complicated my understanding of photography. As a viewer, by learning the power of photography, as well as the power of media and advertising, it’s important to enhance our critical awareness when viewing a photograph, so that we have our judgment, instead of being manipulated and losing ourselves in the mass of production and dissemination of photography.

2020.06.27.