The Background of Photography and the History of Racial Strife

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Table of Contents

Summary
Argument
Organization
Evidence
Questions
References

Summary

The article’s overarching theme is photography and race’s mutual influence, which is obvious throughout. It elaborates on Caroline Bond Day’s study A Study of Some Negro-White Families by delving deeper into the background of photography and the history of racial strife in the US. It explains Day’s final photography project and provides insight into her perspectives on status, race, and their interconnections. Caroline Day’s article shows her political goal to elevate the status of African Americans in the United States with visuals and sociological analysis.

Argument

Since immigration was uncommon at the time of Day’s writing, Ardizonne explains, it was mounting along the East Coast, and the relevance of race shifted from a well-established binary to a multifaceted field of ethnicities. Ardizzone aims to draw attention to Day’s pictures and how they differ from the physical anthropological components of her research (Ardizzone, 2006). This is not meant to be a scathing attack on Day’s work; rather, it is an attempt to protect her from others who have criticized her work based on physical anthropology.

Ardizonne discredits Day’s anthropological component of the study, in which she used images of her subjects labeled with ‘blood quantum percentages,’ indicating the subjects’ Black, white, and Indian ancestry. Ardizonne claims that the tension between the photos and the narrative is practically irreconcilable because Day traces the transmission of the individuals’ facial characteristics via generations. She claims this lowers the person to their ethnicity and contradicts Day’s goal (Tarlo, 2019). Overall, Ardizonne argues that Day’s work was destructive to the political discourse, based on an assessment of the pictures and the content of the anthropological section. This is despite the importance of her sociological statements to the political agenda.

Organization

At the outset of the reading, Day reflects on her upbringing in a segregated and unequal society due to her race. She discusses the difficulty of getting around because of the absence of public transit, the need to sit in separate sections at restaurants and movie theaters, and other such barriers. She then describes her vision for the photographs she took, focusing on the subjects’ ability to overcome adversity and build a secure future for themselves (Ardizzone, 2006). She also noticed the families’ aggregate success as gauged by financial stability, educational attainment, and professional prominence.

I find it intriguing and reasonable that Day used the families’ items to infer their socioeconomic standing. She also tried to provide these details at the back of the images so that viewers might gain a deeper understanding of the culture in which the subjects were immersed. The article continues to explain Day’s viewpoint that the household’s presentation and cleanliness are the responsibility of the women (Owens, 2021). It highlighted that black women might focus on their home live rather than working as maids in a white woman’s residence.

The next section centers on Day’s stated goals for her tasks: to depict the racial and socioeconomic disparities between middle-class black and white families. The outward signs of heritage could enable white Americans to understand their similarities with black middle-class families and eradicate racial disparities (Ardizzone, 2006). Her study was so influential that other researchers in the field of racial studies cited it shortly after its completion. Due to these findings, Day was praised for articulating the greater ability for mixed persons to pass as white than was previously believed. Because of her firsthand knowledge of the culture of her people, her research was given greater weight by these academics than that of white researchers.

The piece then discusses Day’s impact on the film Black Is, Black Ain’t, in which her words and images were featured prominently. Some people found fault with the film’s depiction of her work, including a passage in which she distinguished between powerful, intermediary, and recessive races. The fact that she emphasized mixed-race families contributed to the perception that she was insensitive to people of other backgrounds. The final paragraph discusses her post-series life and the influence her writing has had on the academic world.

Evidence

When defending her interpretations of Day’s work, Ardizonne relies heavily on primary materials. This section summarizes the significance of Day’s study and its practical implications, providing evidence from both the images and other sources. Included are materials from Day’s writing and life that shed light on her background and the factors driving her to work toward racial equality (Ardizzone, 2006). For her comparison of Day’s approach to gaining credibility in the twentieth-century activist movement, Ardizonne drew on the anthropological work of Washington and Dubois.

According to Ardizonne, Day’s tactic served the activist movement well during this era since it shifted the spotlight away from white people’s actions and onto that of African Americans. One might draw parallels to the writings of Washington and Dubois, who, when slavery ended, explored the prospects for African Americans in the United States. Although Day’s research received some backlash for its perceived lack of diversity, it provided previously unknown details on underrepresented groups. This allowed those disparities to be heard in a society that continues to prioritize white supremacy and gender inequity. The sources were crucial for illuminating the far-reaching impact of Day’s study and the subsequent expansion of discourses on race, disparity, and inclusion at the time.

Questions

The following are the three questions I still have:

Have there been other findings regarding the reception of Day’s work following Ardizonne’s writing?
To what extent have additional photographic studies been performed after Day’s work to investigate contemporary society’s racial dynamics and conflicts?
Are there other photographers whose entire body of work is predicated on the idea of race, particularly the physical distinctions between white and black people? Were they able to achieve the same fame as Day, or perhaps more?

References

Ardizzone, H. (2006). ‘Such fine families’: Photography and race in the work of Caroline Bond Day. Visual Studies, 21(2), 106-132.

Owens, C. S. (2021). “Fine discords”: Anarranging the Archives of Philippa Schuyler. American Quarterly, 73(2), 205-231.

Tarlo, E. (2019). Racial hair: The persistence and resistance of a category. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 25(2), 324-348.

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The Background of Photography and the History of Racial Strife

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