Through A Looking Glass Darkly

Through A Looking Glass, Darkly
The Visual Rhetoric Of The Self
Part 1
"For now we see through a glass, darkly." -- Corinthians 13:12 contains that key phrase, possibly
referring to a mirror or a lens. Influenced by Strong's Concordance, many modern translations conclude
that this word refers specifically to a mirror. Example English language translations include:
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror (New International Version)
What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror (Good News Bible)
Part 2
The sweeping film documentary achievement Through A Lens, Darkly: Black Photographers and the
Emergence of a People provides an excellent narrative of the struggle on the especially modern
battlefront of institutional racism: professional media.
As emphasized by the film:
 The late 19th century completely wiped out the portrayal of black men as anything but slaves.
 Freedom is inextricably tied to the power of creating one's self-identity.
The fight against the legacy of slavery meant gaining a victory over being branded, through
self-branding.
Of special poignancy is the formulation of the financed white institutions of education and marketing as
an “imperial” weapon, versus the unfunded Black institutions of family life and society relying on
marking its progress in the mold of conventions being used against them by Whites.
Thus, what may arguably be the signature moment of the film is its recounting of a media victory –
followed by a media defeat.
The victory: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. A Black sociologist and
archivist produced the award-winning show, using images of blacks made by blacks, emphasizing the
intellect and dignity of African Americans even as the concurrent Colonial Exhibit was showing black
peoples in the manner and attitude of zoo exhibits.
… Here were charts showing population growth, the decline in illiteracy and a record of the more
than 350 patents granted to black men since 1834. Du Bois stated, concerning the exhibit “we
have thus, it may be seen, an honest, straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people,

Page | 2 The Visual Rhetoric of the Self
picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by
themselves.” -- http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/society/the-negro-exhibit/
The defeat: D.W. Griffith and the film The Birth Of A Nation. As understood in Through a Lens,
distribution of the film Birth Of A Nation obliterated the incrementally collective imagery of black
progress and dignity achieved by Blacks – at least in the prevailing consciousness of Whites – during
more than the decade prior.
That event demonstrated, horrifyingly, that racism is essentially an abuse of power. The main thesis of
Through the Lens is that in order for success to come from speaking truth to power, it is first necessary
to master speaking truth to one’s self.
In that light, it is an inescapable observation that the release of Through A Lens is itself a continuation of
the Du Bois strategy, aimed at parity (or better) in the fight against modern institutionalization of
racism.
Yet, while both Black and non-Black audiences will certainly learn history from the film, the most critical
importance of the film to Blacks is the fact that it exists in distribution. The film’s actual call to action for
Blacks is not to know the history but instead to continue making it.
Part 3
It is a fact of life that even the most popular films have “runs” where people who have not seen the film
are already aware of it and possibly being affected by it. As a result, the full significance of a film always
includes consideration of the environment that it shares with the greater at-large population providing it
with a potential audience.
The following discussion takes the approach of thinking about a film before seeing it. The trigger for that
approach is the national promotion campaign for the film, Through A Lens, Darkly: Black Photographers
and the Emergence of a People.
Thanks to being well into the 21st
Century, most of us are able to look at how this film is being
positioned, received and critiqued well before it may arrive for viewing in our particular favorite or
convenient venue.
Respect for the accomplishment of the film is universal, but it is far from one-dimensional. A simple
search of the web provides dozens of various summary points of view. I have intentionally omitted
crediting the sources in this tiny sampling here, in order to emphasize that each view is taken as
seriously as each other. However, I have sequenced them to go from the most general and sweeping to
the most specific and targeted. Any one of the summaries is enticing enough to get us to go see the film:

 The film offers a rich history and cultural analysis of African American photography.
 In his eloquent documentary “Through a Lens Darkly,” Thomas Allen Harris chronicles how
African-Americans have sought to regain control of their own image.
 The first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations and
social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present… probes the recesses of
American history by discovering images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lost.
 A film that explores how African American communities have used the camera as a tool for social
change from the invention of photography to the present.
How the film is important
Despite their diversity, the reviewer’s characterizations of the film are always said to be about its
content.
In the least pointed view, the film itself is presented as an important landmark of visual work because it
tells the story the way it does. (And that is a beautifully poetic correspondence of the film to its
argument about its subject. In effect, it has the chance to become part of its own subject.)
In the most pointed view, the film is about the impact of photography made by blacks on the
self-identity of blacks.
However, that narrative is not one of a previously untold story. We know, from examples such as Roy
DeCarava’s body of work or that of David Johnson, that the intent to photographically reflect black life
and identity with the authenticity and authority of black viewpoints is for us not new. We also have
television from the 1980’s. And because we live in the internet era already, the type of imagery in the
film is neither exclusive to the film nor new because of the film.
Thus, there are two major narratives: one, about the film; and, another, within the film.
The important narrative about the film is its own eventfulness.
The eventfulness is our present-day public becoming newly aware of something due to the nature of
film, and in that way accepting that a storehouse of non-public self-description is a “legitimate”
alternative repository of evidence about African American culture. It demonstrates revisionist history.
Meanwhile, the important narrative within the film actually addresses two issues.
 One, what photographers other than those already known are important to the body of work in
question?
 And two, how do we know if those photographers knowingly succeeded in their purpose? (Who,
or what, said that they were?)

Before even seeing the film, its reviews make those questions within it loom large, and set a fair
expectation that the film will have the answers.
A Critique beyond the Reviews
Note: as a convenience In what follows, I will use the terms “African American” and “Black”
synonymously but with the intent to stick to the film’s own subject. Further, I will not always refer to
Blacks in upper case. Part of this discussion involves the difference between being "officially" identified
(politically or culturally) versus being matter-of-factly distinguished (presumably, per ethnicity).
Therefore, I will reserve "Black" as an official or political identification and "use "black" as the common
distinction that pertains aside from any agenda.
In this discussion, I am thinking about how photography is used and how it works, which is a necessary
backdrop to how the film’s arguments (or at least its reviewers’ arguments) will come across after the
film is seen.
In particular, I am interested in including the fact that black photographers and black viewers of
photography have long participated in commerce, art and journalism in ways that are not intentionally
about affirming Black culture even as they generated "a culture" of black people.
At stake is the need to identify the relationship between different ways that blacks show blacks to other
blacks.
When photography influences a community, it is not necessarily intentional, but it is always explainable
– and the rhetoric of its influence is what is getting used and explained.
This fact heightens my additionally particular interest in what some of the film’s reviewers have called
the “vernacular” photographer, regarding how their pictures can “speak to” the concerns of African
American identity when used in a certain way.
Saying "vernacular" raises, by definition, the notion of what is native and ordinary, versus what is not.
For this discussion -- about what kind of influence comes with given kinds of images -- that definition
raises yet another question: what is ordinarily aspirational instead of unusually so, versus what is
ordinary status (experience) or extraordinary status.
That question specifically brings out the politics of the imagery. For example:
 is the ordinary aspirational image usually showing an extraordinary status, or not? (If yes, why?)
 Is there a gap between images of ordinary status and images of unusual aspiration? (If yes, who
propagates the gap, and who experiences the gap?)

The Documentary Mode
Through its mining of family albums, “Through a Lens, Darkly” is expected to highlight a special notion of
“documentary”.
Its idea is that privacy such as of a family protects the motivation of the photographer from the pressure
of publicity, and therefore allows the resulting pictures a “truthfulness” unencumbered or
unadulterated by “artificial” (especially theatrical) expectations.
The model at work is diary-as-journalism, or auto-biography as history. Whether the immediate
audience of those pictures in their own time found them instructive or benign, their value is based in the
credibility of personal (visual) testimony.
But the quite broad question that reviewers raised with the film is whether these pictures were, on the
whole, substantive enough to serve as a buffer or remedy against imagery about blacks generated by
other means. At least implicitly, the other means would be imagery by non-blacks or by the interests of a
“non-black culture”.
Unavoidably, the value of the film proposes that it is necessary to ask what actually became evident
through the pictures in the film, and how evident that was in their own time. Answering that question is
the primary purpose of the film and is also why the film is a "history" instead of just a survey.
Persuasion
The legacy of the 1960s is largely one of Black “consciousness” developing as a cultural norm rather than
an exception. In disruptive but evolutionary fashion, those who already had "higher consciousness"
evangelized with significant success and of course with controversy -- as the rejection of old public
standards and assumptions matured into an activism for different positive values.
The thrust of “The Movement” within the black community in the U.S. was to change the way blacks saw
themselves by accepting and celebrating characteristics that had been deemed lacking in beneficial
value both socially and psychologically. Necessarily, the Movement obviously and aggressively
addressed ambitions, aesthetics and attitudes, counter-culturally.
There was an expectation that blacks would change and adopt a new common "identity" under the
influence of its campaign – moving away from tolerating being unappreciated or neglected when
conforming to non-black cultural norms; and away from being inhibited or suppressed when conforming
to normal, natural, attributes of Black culture.
Black Pride, in other words, was not just affirmative but activist. The community of blacks was expected
to decide to be a certain way.
Given that well-known historical reference, the film’s proposal poses yet another question: without the
pressure of causing or having publicity, did the sustained cumulative work of black photographers

picturing black families exert a preponderant influence on how blacks chose to be seen?
Whenever in history the answer to that is yes, it means that the circumstances of that time were able to
be influenced by the way photography works.
Said differently, there is a reason why images at a given time have a meaning that makes a difference.
Cataloging Imagery
Understanding photography's impact on African American culture requires holding several critical
perspectives concurrently.
We get to see the different effects of looking through the glass… there are narratives, reflections, and
comparisons available.
These perspectives also provide the general language used to identify the subject matter of the imagery.
1. In one perspective, as already noted, meaning is generated from the difference between experience
and aspiration.
Because photographs can document, the outcomes here are mainly Histories of experience and
histories of aspiration.
In a viewer's response to available images, narratives have the greatest influence in this arena.
When we cross-reference (or test) aspirations as being ordinary or extraordinary, we find “desire” or
“ambition” to be the terms of the story. We look to see if the image is providing that view of things. It
may be showing something about experience as well. It may be drawing connections in some direction
between an aspiration and an experience…
Documented Representation
concept rendered Ordinary Extraordinary
Aspiration Desire Ambition
Experience Status quo Exception

2. A second critical perspective is one in which meaning is generated from the difference between the
personal and the social.
This is an arena of Identity imagery and usually involves actuals versus allegations as recognized by an
individual about themselves.
In this perspective, the individual can measure the gap between how they believe they really are for
themselves and how they want to be for others.
In a viewer's response to available images, reflections dominate in this arena.
Audience:
Private Public
Self:
Personal Intimate Polite
Social Trusted Common
Typical Affinity
offered
Self Exposure: Personal vs. Social
Does the image of one’s self mirror the self-image in the mind?

3. In yet another key perspective, meaning comes from the difference between the private and the
public.
Here, there is an environment of Descriptions that are indifferent to any particular individual and are
more a matter of how other parties might recognize an individual.
In a viewer's response to available images, comparisons prevail in this arena.
Audience:
Private Public
Self:
Personal Partner/Kinship Office
Social Organization Community
Typical Role
taken
AudienceExposure: Privacy vs. Publicity
Are the implied expectations of the observed self matching the reality of the offered self?

Expression
Within each perspective – the history, the identity, or the description – there are two interesting
considerations.
One is about whether the same meaning of the image as determined and held by one person (an
assertion) is shared by other persons (a convention) or not.
Another is about whether the meaning is more prescribed (or promoted) than discovered (existing).
The relationship of the first consideration to the second is a relationship of icons (weak or strong) to
symbols (weak or strong).
In other words, their relationship is nothing less than the main dynamic of culture.
ICONS SYMBOLS
Held Shared Discovered Prescribed
History
(narratives)
(assertion) (convention) (existing) (promoted)
Identity
(reflections)
Description
(comparisons)
Visual Culture
Finally, the totality of the perspectives covers the range of ways and reasons that concepts, roles, and
affinities interact in the use of images.
Note that for the remainder of this discussion, we take the position that the influence of visual culture is
a cumulative result of repeated exposure to recurring presentations of imagery, whether the influence is
on only one viewer or on many.

Self-Definition
When we work with the idea of African American culture, the predominant issues are those of how
being American makes sense of African values, or of how African values evolve the meaning of being
American. That said, both issues evolve over time.
And both of those issues stand in the shadow of an epic defining myth of how the modern American
culture was born.
For some, being “American” is an emotionally superior brand of freedom (called "our way of life")
rooted in the absence of any war at home with a foreign force that was survived.
This absence, were it true, is critical to America's differentiating stance versus the global norms, It's
presumption is of a lack of conflict, earlier as the American Experiment called the "Melting Pot"
(blending) and now ongoing as domestic peace (homeland security).
But thanks to both the Revolution and the Civil War, we know that the singularly differentiating mythic
germ of the American culture is definitely not the absence of a war at home with a foreign force that
was survived.
Instead, the myth is based in struggle. Struggle is recurring and familiar. At the regional level, Southern
states of course know well what coming through cultural occupation and literal reconstruction is about.
And, the generic opposition of America's northern culture to its southern culture is reiterated at least by
the southern opposition to African culture.
But the struggle that forges the essential "American" identity is not mainly a cultural one.
Rather, while ignoring indigenous societies and other motherlands, it is a concept of “A People”
prevailing over nature to perform discovery and self-realization, with an American psyche as the result.
Historically, nature has been the Atlantic Ocean, then the Wild West, then manual labor, then gravity
itself…
The core concept of being "American" is to be an explorer who discovers. Americans explore, discover,
and then move in – whether it is the landmass above Mexico, the Internet, or the Moon. While the
"unfriendly" view of that is called Imperialism, the other "friendly" view – the one adopted as essentially
American – is called "Frontier-ism".

The Rhetoric of The Self
Black America
The black comedian Flip Wilson once profoundly joked, in his routine "Christopher Columbus", that
Spanish Queen Isabelle's enthusiasm for funding exploration was that she wanted to discover America
and find Ray Charles.
When Columbus arrived at the Atlantic coast of the Americas, the people who already lived there told
him, "You better discover your ass on outta here."
But the fundamental challenge of being African American is in trying to exercise that defining American
privilege – of exploring and claiming a discovery in the pre-existing continental American environment,
and then moving in. For the most part, the privilege has not been culturally granted to blacks, even if
legally allowed.
African Americans were not voluntary explorers of a non-African environment. And the cruel logic of the
American Revolution and frontier-ism says that you don't have the American Privilege on land that you
did not fight to obtain.
Arrival-by-Slavery voids the exploration criterion, which eliminates the credit of earning the right to
make claim.
That development pushes African Americanism into the imagery of several general "residential" roles.
For example: one role is Alien; another is Dissident, and another is Assimilator.
Even if those labels are used only as placeholders -- for distinguishing identities, histories or descriptions
– the way African America "sees itself" will variously inhabit that full range.
And, as earlier generations of blacks age and die out, the newest generation adds another role in greater
common presence: Inventor.

Points of View
The matters cited above account for the matrix of complexity and diversity that underlies any
presumption about a universe of African American images of African Americans.
We can look into any slice of that universe and understand that it co-exists with many different others,
and that it may interact with them as well.
African Americanas…
Image as… Alien Dissident Assimilator Inventor
History
(narratives)
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Identity
(reflections)
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Description
(comparisons)
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
Iconic, or
symbolic?
The range of possible predispositionsfor expressions of
black ambitions, aestheticsand attitudes.
What is the prevalent imagery of a black person seeing themselves or seeing other blacks as (cultural)
aliens, as dissidents, as assimilators, or as inventors?
In any of those cases, is the main concern with identity, with history, or with description? And is the
emphasis iconic, or is it symbolic? Primarily personal or social? Primarily private or public? As these
factors are mixed and matched, a huge variety of paths of influence emerges.
And finally, the image collections may be still pictures, video, or films – each with a broadcast
(publishing) history of its own yet all of them continually operating concurrently – and therefore
creating an environment of massive heterogeneous image exposure.
Consequently, we have no basis for exact predictions of what will predominate; but we have a basis for
understanding why something has an influence when it occurs.
Therefore, our concern is with the motivations of image providers to have an influence of some given
type. Our overall concern is with the visual rhetoric at work.

Predispositions
When we use the term "photographer", we shift our point of view on all of this from "seeing" to
"showing". Yet showing does not alter the matrix at all.
It does become a matter of fact that the trends of showing can, in market-like fashion, ebb and flow
with demand. Thus, by investigating the demand instead of the photographs, we get a fix on what image
audiences hoped to gain from image providers. If we look further, into why audiences preferred some
imagery to others, the sociology begins to help map out whether given types of images correlate with
changes in needed uses over time.
On the demand side: trends in seeing include two strains, or more. Sometimes, as a celebration or
aspiration or affirmation, the experience of images validate current dispositions. But sometimes, as an
examination or a protest, the experience provokes a need for different kinds of images.
Meanwhile, on the supply side: trends in showing might also reflect the opportunities that were
available at the time of image production. These opportunities are facts about how certain kinds of
images became available in the first place, and the circumstances always have an important relationship
to any presumed intent of the photographer.
In any given circumstance, a photographer might adapt a current opportunity towards the best
approximation of the photographer's intention. A fashion shot can be a political statement. A document
can be a model. Evidence can be an aesthetic proposition. A single sports event can be the source of
portraits, of celebrations of achievement, or of studies of violence.
Because the reason for producing the image may not match an audience’s reason for accepting it, it is
fair to take any use of the image with informed skepticism.
We know that both journalism and history are actually curatorial, but in the current era, random access
to digitized images makes them routinely available out of context. This erases much of the prepared
introduction that normally prescribes how we are to interpret what we see, which adds importance to
determining when curation may be in effect and why.
A certain given image easily means something different in a gallery, a magazine, a police station, a
school hallway, a living room, or a wallet. Importantly, each one of those presentation contexts tells us
that there is a certain reason why we should attribute value to what we see.
The value judgments thus belong to the context used for presentation. When images migrate across
contexts, different values occur. Implicit in any picture is more than one kind of value.

The Showing
Understanding the inherent malleability of visual meaning, the appropriate way to review a visual
presentation is to first determine its motivation; then apply caution regarding its limits; then, in light of
those considerations, measure its depth and weight of effects.
The biggest beneficiary of that discipline is the contexts that have not previously been recognized as
creating a kind of importance having value. This is important because it is not the pictures that have
been lacking significance but instead the context that has been lacking attention or promotion.
Through A Lens, Darkly argues that Black self-awareness emerged from a context of viewing routine
evidence of the self, and that the resulting self-awareness was adequate to fend off competing,
denigrating imagery of that same time.
The Genre
The understanding about black photographers making pictures of black people for black people
involves a blend of several contexts each trying to contribute distinctions.
In the 1970s, Allan Sekula published in Artforum Magazine the following key idea about photography,
with the observation that there is:
“… a ‘symbolist’ folk-myth and a ‘realist’ folk-myth. The misleading but popular form of this opposition is
‘art photography’ vs. ‘documentary photography’. Every photograph tends, at any given moment of
reading in any given context, towards one of these two poles of meaning…. photography as expression
vs. photography as reportage.”
In the case of Through a Lens Darkly, there is a fusion of those ideas.
Specifically, the film asks us to consider what the reportage expresses.
With that, there is a notion of the photographer’s expressive “Self” and a notion of the viewer’s
recognizable reported “Self”.
However, as we know due to visual rhetoric, we must also acknowledge that there is a notion of the
photographer’s reportage “Self” and a notion of the viewer’s expressive “Self”.
At first, it is comfortable to accept those variations in a "default" arrangement:

Motivation and Representation
Modality
Photographer’s
offer & delivery
Viewer’s
receipt & use
“Expression” symbolic imagination
“Reportage” realistic information
However, we have to consider that a viewer can take up either imagination or information as a purpose,
and use the photographer's work for the desired purpose regardless of whether the available work is
symbolic or realistic. For example, people have very little trouble working with models (symbolic
information) and roles (realistic imagination).
FunctionalInterpretations of the Image
Data Type Imagination Information
Symbolic Gesture Model
Realistic Role Fact
For the purposes of the film Through A Lens, Darkly, we need to identify what use of the pictures is
proposed based on their provision. This will be about how the pictures are able to meet a need
otherwise unmet or underserved. We are told that recognition of the self is the battle being waged, and
possibly won or lost with the pictures. This maps most directly to a consciousness of Identity. Thus we
need to see what meaning is attributed to “pictures of black people”. This will be about the function of
the images – as intended versus actual.

We also need to see what the production by “black photographers” might mean. This will start with
looking at the creative opportunities obtained and used by blacks.
Affordable photography drove the growth of both non-professional photography and broad personal
practice. In turn, as African-American individuals prioritized their expenses, a significant number of them
felt that making pictures was important enough to budget.
Accordingly, we then look at what circumstances lent that importance, and this attention to
circumstances maps most directly to a Historical consciousness. However, there is a logical
consideration of what influences are introduced into the visual rhetoric by the production itself. This is
especially important in the case of distinguishing a supply of "significant" images from the overall
supply, for representation of the subject. Once we decide to apply selection criteria to the supply, we
need to determine when the producers are targeting the criteria versus when the image is appropriated
for some user with the criteria.
RequirementsStandards of the Image
Production type Recreational Assigned
Professional invented prescribed
Amateur spontaneous proposed
Finally we need to consider the environment of perception, in particular for photographic images
compared to other forms of representation. The medium itself does not dictate whether the image is
literal or figurative, nor does it dictate whether the image is about a confirmed reality or a proposed
idea. Photographs also do not occur in an exclusive universe of only other photographs. As part of a
broader experience of communications, photographs may have various roles as instruments in a larger
scheme of things.
A decision to use photographs may have importance not just as a communications opportunity but also
as a communications alternative.

The question here is why photography would prevail in its presumed role when there are other
communications media also at work in the environment. The easy answer would be that the force of
impact of photographic pictures is relatively high in the circumstances of their use. What goes along
with that idea is some validation of the receptivity of viewers and where it comes from.
The simplest hypothesis for receptivity is one based on need. When viewers need a photograph to do
what it can do, then its occasion is naturally going to get more attention.
What we know about communication in general is that our needs will stem from our experience of our
current awareness of something. We feel the state of awareness itself as being missing, inadequate to
the moment, or painful.
If we accept that observation as the standpoint for validation, then we will quickly accept that
photography's community-wide influence relies on the need level of the individual being an experience
held in common by most of the community. We want to identify what type of need is so common.
Communications Affects of the Image
Impacts Introduce Reinforce Challenge
Authority define prove modify
Medium expose repeat contrast
One of the important possibilities is that the need for photographs is largely created by the influence of
other forms of communication. On the other hand, editing and curating in photography itself asserts a
predisposition that works as a market for an offer of a solution.
Both the environment and the offers are sources of demand that will map most directly to our
consciousness of Description.
But description per se is not limited to particular messages. The capability to describe things is assigned
to a message for a reason. In effect, these assignments are managed by the rhetoric of both the image
producer and the image user.

Summary
The reviews of the film Through A Lens, Darkly function largely as previews offering an exceptional look
at an exciting discovery. They promise that the film, as a finished work itself, is a first, is sweeping, and is
completely convincing.
But because of the subject matter, there are three major topics in which the excitement should
materialize: the Identity, the History and the Description of African Americans.
As effects, the topics clearly interact, and in their areas of interaction, photography travels back and
forth between them. It seems that this would be self-evident, but the complexity of photography's
presence is quite high, resulting from tensions that apply to each effect the images are asked to have:
- Identity through Recognition: described as, versus attributed to
- History through Representation: produced for, versus appropriated for
- Description through Communication: assigned to, versus demanded by
However, in the case of any given photograph, a forensic account of its influences can profile the picture
in a way that it can be associated with other pictures and with events in which the picture is deemed
successful for its audience's need.

Conclusion
As an exit from my foundational analysis of how and why photographs can be doing what the film claims
they can do, I'm summarizing in a completely opinionated way, what I would want from the film,
because of what has been promised.
The most excitement about identity here would be in a confirmation that the experience of African
Americans reflects a sustainable and desirable compatibility of an American psyche and a Black culture.
Yet, the most historical excitement here would be in two flavors of revelation about the time period,
obtained from the images.
 One is that blacks as a community are seen being secure and successful, routinely doing
self-sustaining and self-rewarding things that blacks are not expected to be doing.
 The other is that blacks are seen doing unprecedented things of high worth beyond black
communities or Black culture.
 And finally, the most excitement about description would be a validation that some inevitability
of success at self-determination comes with the routine enterprise of "authentically" journaling
personal experience through the camera.
The analysis in this document’s discussion is not meant to predict that the film will succeed in that way,
but the analysis should explain how the film succeeds if it does succeed.
If it turns out that the film meets all three of those desires, the importance of that success is not just
about the film itself.
Rather, what should further be true is that any surveying and cataloging of photography by blacks for
blacks – whether it came before this film or comes afterwards – can be clarified in the same manner of
analysis, and thereby join this film and other similar studies in the same library of knowledge for this
sociological domain..
(c) 2015 Malcolm Ryder / artdotdot.com

Through A Looking Glass Darkly

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