Through a Lens Darkly

This afternoon I watched Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris.

I’m posting it here because it is a must see to my mind but also because features photographer and Material Life STYLE owner Carla Williams.

I never met Carla face to face – I interviewed her online for a ‘zine called Trade:Queer Things back in the days when payment was a free book, namely The Black Female Body (Carla was co-editor). The ‘zine cover featured a nude self-portait of Carla.

Years later, the editor of the ‘zine was at a ‘zine fair and that cover would cause controversy. Viewers could not believe that Carla would willing show her own Black Female Body under her own terms.

But in the end, that is what the documentary is all about – being able, as Black people, to determine how we are seen by others.