STEREOTYPES.
The black woman is seen so much worse by the world than she actually is. Black women are not their stereotypes, they are just trying to be uniquely themselves in a sea of underminers.
When creating my proposal for my final project, I knew that I wanted to focus on something that related to my life in some way. During a FaceTime conversation with my friend, Sydney, we talked about our different experiences as young black women in their first year in college and one topic resonated with me the most: stereotypes. We exchanged different experiences of stereotypes as black women and after our conversation, I decided to look deeper into common stereotypes of African American women across the country.
In each image, I decided to include the name of each stereotype to make it known to each viewer and have them reflect on whether or not they have black women in those regards. The decision to make the images larger than 3x4 was to make create a larger impact for the viewer in seeing the photo. If I displayed the image in black and white, I feared that the images would resemble a mugshot rather than allow for an impact on the viewer.
In doing my artist presentation project, I discovered Kwame Brathwaite whose work was crucial to the beginning of the “Black is Beautiful” movement in the early 60s and he portrayed black women as beautiful in their natural hair despite the idea of society that black women should never wear their hair straight. He empowered women to embrace their natural selves and I intend to do that in my work.