Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9202280323
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID MILLS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The book has just been released, and a companion exhibition has just opened for a three-month stay at the Corcoran. And it's clear that the photographers had some very good days indeed.
"Songs of My People" was conceived grandly as a "self-portrait" of black America through some of its most talented eyes, a definitive document of the African-American present. The exhibition, with its full-size matted and mounted black-and-white images, succeeds even more than the book in absorbing the viewer into its richly populated world.
There are a number of stunning pictures that simply won't let your eyes go. A game of hide-and-seek, captured by C.W. Griffin, seems actually to be swirling with the motion of children. Jeffery Allan Salter's tight close-up of a Marine recruit's face shows hundreds of discrete drops of sweat. Cheers' own series on a homeless couple in Washington includes one dim, claustrophobic shot of a woman cooking on a hot plate, her eyes looking up vacantly. There's something almost religious about the way a lone fluorescent light fixture paints her face.
"Songs of My People" is largely a story told in faces. Conrad Barclay's portrait of jazz artist Stanley Turrentine as an expressionistic blur. D Stevens' image of confrontational bravado in the look and stance of a guy from a south central Los Angeles housing project.
Before any of these pictures was taken, the organizers - Cheers, media consultant Eric Easter, Washington Post photographer Dudley Brooks - said they wanted to show "everything," the bad as well as the good in today's black America. But then Brooks in particular would make the point that black photographers in the mainstream media often find themselves constrained by the demands of their business to focus on the "sensational" - often, criminals and their victims. This warps people's perceptions of African-Americans. And that provided a sort of political and psychological undercurrent to "Songs of My People." A sense of mission.
It is therefore not a strike against the book or the exhibit that it dwells on uplifting or heartwarming images. (Geary G. Broadnax, who decided to photograph black prisoners in Texas, was commended for his sacrifice during a press conference this week. No matter what he shot, his pictures wouldn't be the ones reproduced on "Songs of My People" posters and T-shirts.) You realize, actually, when you see Dixie D. Vereen's two gorgeously composed photographs of a man holding an infant, just how rare certain images are in the mass media, just how powerful "Songs" can be as politics.
Unfortunately, "Songs of My People" is imbalanced in a couple of more subtle ways. The exhibition, particularly, relies too much on portraiture. There doesn't seem to be enough action, enough of the sense of the drama of everyday life, as in David Lee's peek into the comfortably cluttered world of a Brooklyn beauty parlor or Keith Williams's more exotic documentation of black rodeo performers.
There's also an abundance of shots of youngsters and old folks, whose cuteness or nobility apparently proved irresistible for many photographers trying to make a high-impact picture. Of the 150 photographs in the exhibition, three are of elderly individuals gazing stoically out of a window.
But then, a few of the most unforgettable images are of children and old people. Keith Hadley's photo of a somber 9-year-old Miami schoolgirl, peering from behind an American flag - chosen for the book cover - seems destined to become an emblem of the entire project. And the biggest crowd-pleaser at the Corcoran, judging by preview audiences, is Sharon Farmer's three-shot series of a 97-year-old woman demonstrating her facility with a hula hoop. The third photo serves as a virtual punch line: The woman, Washingtonian Beatrice Ferguson, stands with a peculiar smile, the hoop at her feet, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Songs" will be at the Corcoran through May 3.
PHOTOGRAPHY "Songs of My People" exhibit on view at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. N.W., Washington, D.C., through May 3. (202) 638-3211.
by CNB