Audrey and her Kodak

Audrey and her Kodak
  • Washington, DC
  • 1960

Photo of young Audrey (Umi) with mother Carmen (R) and cousin Margie (L) in front of Lincoln Memorial

Notes: I've noticed the photo of a person taking a photo or holding a camera is somewhat iconic. Here, I've included them because it makes me think of the role of photographer in the lives of Black people. There is a lot of documenting of Black people even before the invention of the camera, and that documentation has been a form of surveillance and control and a judgment of who is human, considering the way it still hard to capture Black people correctly from cameras to facial recognition technology. There are a LOT of photo in Umi's archive and the choice to invest time and money into that, capturing the moments, speaks to me about a kind of self-determination. That I will capture myself the way I see myself and what to be known.