Photography and Film

Douglass considered photography an important tool in ending slavery and racism, and believed that the camera would not lie, even in the hands of a racist white person, as photographs were an excellent counter to many racist caricatures, particularly in Blackface minstrelsy. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, consciously using photography to advance his political views. He never smiled, so as not to play into the racist caricature of a happy enslaved person. 

He was also a very good looking man and striking figure. While the world trends towards showing him as an older man with fairly long, mostly white hair, here is a photo of him in his thirties.

Photography was relatively new and was all in black and white. We didn't yet have a wealth of knowledge about how to lie with pictures, nor tools like Photoshop to twist images into whatever we want them to be.

Photography was relatively expensive and as far as I know not yet plastered all over billboards and cheap magazines. Photography has changed in the hundred-plus years since the death of Frederick Douglass and my opinion of photos is largely the opposite of his:

Photos not only are rampant liars, capturing the ugly views of racists, misogynists and other hateful people, they are poisoning the planet by filling our heads with an imaginary Fantasyland that convinces ordinary people they are ugly.

Douglass used photography to seek freedom for enslaved people. Photographs today are mostly used to bully people into buying products to line the pockets of assholes who don't care about you and to force ideas down your throat so thoroughly that there is little hope of standing up to it.

I would like to make clothes and I think there is no hope of succeeding because I don't want to sell the image everyone thinks is important.

I want to sell quality of life and I don't know how you tell people "This will raise the bar on quality of life for you."

Contrary to the views of Frederick Douglass that the camera would not lie, even in the hands of a racist white person, when they invented color photography, they created development chemicals designed to optimize for making racist White Supremacist Caucasian mother fuckers look good and color photography actively misrepresents people of color and makes them less attractive.

I read a piece about this years ago on Metafilter and I am not going to bother to look for it because the last time I did, I was absolutely horrified at how cringe my comments are. I was homeless and these upper class assholes were openly classist sacks of shit and my desperate attempts to fit in and also say something meaningful came out in ways that "do not age well."

I was trying to convey the idea that White people are MORONS who actively harm themselves by doing this bullshit because it means the camera LIES and does so extremely convincingly and this means no matter WHO you are -- even the over privileged wealthy White bastards and bitches intentionally designing this Lord of the Flies CESSPIT we live in -- you don't KNOW the truth and what's real.

And it sounds like I'm saying "I'm White and I don't like it and it should cater to ME and my tastes because I have the right skin color for my opinions to count."

UGH!!!!!

Anyway, my recollection is that the article in question was by a woman of color who was a photographer and actively trying to find ways to get better photos of her people and she was interested in the chemistry and technical challenges of correcting a development process inherently biased in a way that meant photos of ALL people on the planet who are NOT Caucasian are inaccurate and unflattering.

I can't readily find a percentage of global population, but I'm guessing "Caucasian" or "White" is well below half and probably a relatively tiny minority, probably below twenty percent. And that shouldn't be a controversial claim for anyone who knows anything about planet Earth.

So, with all due respect to one of my favorite historical figures, Frederick Douglass, these days the camera LIES in racist ways in everyone's hands, not just White racists, because White assholes designed them to do so. Unless, perhaps, you are some weirdo statistical outlier Black American photographer trying to find solutions.

And that's before we get into problems of how photography causes a bizarre form of creep in clothes, beauty, architecture and home decor by putting constant pressure on manufacturers and other people making money in those industries to worry primarily about whoring their work out to the NEED to play well in pictures and all other metrics be damned.

My recollection is that food photography does horrifying stuff like using Elmer's Glue in place of milk because it won't make the cereal limp and it looks better in photos.

We essentially do the same thing for clothes, home decor etc. AND THEN we SELL you the glue to drink in those industries.

Yum.

(Do I need a sarcasm tag here in this insane brainwashed world?)