#Galleryyuhself/Viola Davis Cover

[galleryyuhself]

~Galleryyuhself OPINION ~ I take real issue with this beautiful cover of Viola Davis. At first blush it is simply gorgeous. She shows her back and the statement is strong. However, the Photographer Mr.Calmese (First black Photographer doing a cover for century old (1913 then reprised in 1983)) Vanity Fair! Shameful in itself that it took so damn long!) My gripe is the means to SELL magazines to a mostly white audience. Both the Photographer and Mrs.Davis may believe that they are sending a strong black message to said audience, but something else is also at play here. I am quoting my friend Performance Artist Akuzuru who says it best...

“Why the photographer found it necessary to juxtapose the image of a brutalized African person who was enslaved, to conceptualize the photo of Viola Davis? It is indeed a beautiful image of the actress, but why the slavery association? It both mocks and glorifies the brutality in a terrible parallel of perception. Must we be consistently traumatized by these reminders whilst (they) expect us to just get over it? The photo is absolutely beautiful, but the concept is problematic. Why did he have to make that association! He could have exercised full creative power at Vanity Fair without giving in to (their) fetishized ideas of Blackness.

she continues-:  Why couldn't it just be a beautiful photo with all the love you have for Viola and her beautiful black shiny skin. You had to rip it apart, yeah ? This happens to Black woman everywhere. You cannot just be too beautiful, our beauty is too damn much for them, they need to shield it with brutality. Brutality is all they fucking know!

Yet, oddly enough, after this furor, Viola Davis will be remembered  for a beautiful, powerful image on the cover of Vanity Fair. The reference forgotten at first glance. Yet, African Americans will continue to be challenged by perception and the perceived. GY

FIRST ‘VANITY FAIR’ COVER SHOT BY A BLACK PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE MAGAZINE’S HISTORY FEATURES VIOLA DAVIS IN STUNNING RE'CONTEXTUALISED IMAGE ''As Calmese describes it, the cover concept is “a recreation of the Louis Agassiz slave portraits taken in the 1800s — the back, the welts.” He continues, “This image reclaims that narrative, transmuting the white gaze on Black suffering into the Black gaze of grace, elegance and beauty.”