Reprinted by permission of Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College
Becoming Visible / Foriando Presencia
Faces of Africa in Latin America
Photographs by Tony Gleaton
Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College January 26 - March 29, 1997. This exhibition has been supported by the Department of Art and Art History, the Latin American and Chicano Studies Programs, the office of the Dean and the Wig Fund for Teaching of Pomona College; the Intercollegiate Program in Black Studies; and the Office of Black Student Affairs of the Claremont Colleges. Special thanks to Ray Buriel, Laura Hoopes, Phyllis Jackson, Sid Lemelle, Sheila Pinkel, Benita Ramsey, and Miguel Tinker Salas.
Foreword
The 65 photographs in this exhibition, drawn from a larger series of 150 entitled Tengo Casi 500 Años: Africa's Legacy in Mexico, Central and South America, constitute an ambitious and important project. Since 1986, Tony Gleaton has traveled throughout Latin America in search of the African Diaspora, seeking out black communities and, through his photographs, giving visibility to people who are, in his view, invisible in their societies. Although his work serves as a document of the little-known presence of blacks in Mexico and Central and South America, his approach is not "documentary" insofar as that term implies objective and emotionally neutral observation. Tony Gleaton's "eye" is neither objective nor dispassionate. He is intensely involved both with the content of his photographs and with the artistic processes involved in producing them. Of mixed African and European heritage, he brings to his subject a lifetime of experience as a person of color living in predominantly non-black cultures; a highly educated and well traveled artist, he brings to his work highly refined aesthetic sensibilities and technical skills. These elements come together on an intuitive level in works of art that strike an admirable balance of form and content.
Art critic Robert Hughes once defined a good exhibition as "art plus thought." If one adds " in equal measure," this is probably as good a working definition as any. It is also a fair statement of the goal of exhibitions at Montgomery Gallery. The balance between art and thought in an exhibition might be compared to that between form and content in a work of art. Both can be tricky to achieve. This seems particularly the case now, when formalism is out of favor, when much contemporary art is content driven, when much of that content is strongly political, and when there is strong pressure on the museum to be less of a "temple" for the worship of art and more of a "forum" for the presentation and discussion of issues of topical concern. Although formal values and aesthetic concerns may play as significant a role as ever in the impact of works of art and exhibitions, these can be overwhelmed by content, particularly when the content in question is of special relevance and significance to the public. In the case of this exhibition, which consists of work by an artist whose intention is, in part, to address the complicated ways in which notions of "race," "color," and "class" come to be understood, I believe that we must be careful.
The danger that content will blind us to form seems especially great in the case of photography, with its "implied veracity." Bombarded as we are by photographic images, the great majority of which purport to reflect "reality," it is easy to forget the directive role of the photographer who selects, frames, poses, manipulates—in short, creates--images that are, in fact, a new reality. On some level, we tend to assume that what a photograph shows is what was there, what presented itself for the passive mechanism of the camera to record. This can be true even when we know better, even when we remember that there is no such thing as a neutral, objective "eye" when a human being is behind the camera. When the content of a photograph is compelling, it is easy to undervalue the photographer's art.
I have always believed that in presenting art to the public, one should, when possible, make clear the artist's intent. This is not to say that art cannot, or does not, speak to us in meaningful ways never envisioned by the artist, but simply that intent, if it can be determined, should be part of the equation. This is not always easy, as many artists prefer not to put into words what they have expressed concretely. In this context, Gleaton is a particularly gratifying artist to work with because of his perspective on himself and his art, which he is willing to examine and discuss and about which he is impressively articulate. His reflections on his work can be found throughout the exhibition.
The issue of "voice," of who has the right to "speak for" another, is being debated with great intensity these days in museums, which are struggling to reflect and serve increasingly diverse publics. The debate arises from the traditionally authoritative stance of the museum that is now, quite properly being questioned and challenged. In an effort to counter the common assumption that what is written on the walls of the public museum lays claim to a higher level of "authority," we have invited several individuals to offer their comments on the photographs. The variety of their responses and perceptions will, it is hoped, encourage viewers to examine their own and, if they wish, help us broaden the dialogue by recording their observations in the comment book provided.
The increasing diversity that characterizes our communities requires us all, whatever our color, gender, and sexual orientation, to look hard at ourselves and our place in the world; for many, this involves reconsidering deeply conditioned perceptions. This process is particularly important on the college campus, where students' values are often at a formative stage; ideally, academia should provide fertile ground for such work to take place. This is certainly the case at Pomona College. Simply to list those groups who have supported this exhibition and worked with us in organizing it gives a sense of its perceived relevance: the Department of Art and Art History, the Latin American
and Chicano Studies programs, the Office of the Dean and the Wig Fund for Teaching of Pomona College; the Intercollegiate Program in Black Studies; and the Office of Black Student Affairs of The Claremont Colleges. Within each of these, one finds as many personal "voices" as there are interested individuals, and we are grateful to all of them for their support.
Marjorie L. Harth, Director, Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College
Tony Gleaton
By Marjorie L. Harth
Tony Gleaton was born in 1948 in Detroit, where he lived until his family moved to California in 1959. In 1967, at the age of 19, he joined the Marine Corps and subsequently completed a tour of duty in Vietnam. Returning to California after being discharged, he entered UCLA, became interested in photography, and eventually moved to New York, where he worked as a photographer's assistant and briefly considered a career as a fashion photographer. After only achieving moderate success, Gleaton tired of the fashion scene and, in 1981, traveled in the American West, doing odd jobs and photographing cowboys, focusing on Native Americans and blacks. Of this period, Gleaton has said: "That was the beginning of a whole new phase in my life and an awakening for me as a black American. . .Black and Native American cowboys don't fit the John Wayne image, so history and the mythic tales of the American West never included them." While at work on that series, he was introduced to the Mexican rodeo and began traveling to Mexico from Los Angeles. When he learned that small communities of blacks, descendants of the colonial slave trade, inhabited the Costa Chica region, he set out to find them. "When I got there, I found a people without a common mythology. Every village had a different tale of how their ancestors arrived in Mexico. I thought it was interesting that the early presence of blacks in the Americas was rarely discussed and largely undocumented." From 1983 to 1990, Gleaton traveled extensively in Mexico, eventually producing a large series of photographs entitled "Africa's Legacy in Mexico." In 1990, he extended his work to include Central America, and in 1994, he began the South American series, which is exhibited here for the first time.
Gleaton brings intensely personal concerns to his work. "The photographs I create are as much an effort to define my own life, with its heritage encompassing Africa and Europe, as it is an endeavor to throw open the discourse on broader aspects of mestizaje, the 'assimilation' of Asians, Africans, and Europeans with indigenous Americans. . ." With his light brown skin and hair, and green eyes, Gleaton has had difficulty persuading his subjects that he is black and that he is interested in them as black people, something many deny. "Black," applied to an individual, is often a pejorative term in Latin America; the darker one's skin—the farther from white—the lower one’s perceived status. Gleaton sees this "societal and individual devaluation" as the legacy of colonialism, and his work is, at least in part, an attempt to address this history, an effort at redress: "The most important aspect of these portraits is the giving of a narrative voice by visual means to people deemed invisible by the greater part of society and, in so doing, crafting an 'alternative iconography' of beauty, family, love, goodness... one that is parallel to but outside the bounds of European-based art, one that is inclusive, not exclusive."
Tony Gleaton's Art
By Marjorie L. Harth
If there is no question about the importance that Gleaton's subject matter holds for him personally, nor about the political impact he hopes his photographs will have, it is equally clear that his approach is that of an artist making works of art. Unlike the documentary photographer who seeks to limit interaction with the subject, maintaining a certain detachment and focusing as objectively as possible on specifics of time, place, and circumstance, Gleaton engages and often poses his subjects, arranging scenes to suit both aesthetic and narrative purposes—in short, constructing images. Photographs that appear candid—casually observed and quickly recorded—are frequently the result of a long and deliberate process that includes crucial decisions about composition, lighting, and printing and that call on Gleaton's knowledge of the places he visits, ability to select telling images, sense of timing, and sensitivity to individual subjects, along with technical skill in using the camera.
Gleaton is straightforward about the degree of manipulation his images involve and clear about his reasons for working this way. He carefully positions the subjects of two-person and group compositions, using their physical relationship within the frame to illuminate psychological and emotional bonds; he pays particular attention to the direction of their eyes, understanding the meaning that can be conveyed by means of a glance. In The Dark Madonna/La Madona Morena (Guerrero, Mexico), for example, Gleaton says: "I asked the mother to look down and away from me, because the look I was getting from her wasn't in harmony with the baby's expression. She thus becomes the strongest hierarchical element in the image, but, because of the child's eye contact, he becomes the dominant figure. In Family of the Sea/Familia del Mar (Guatemala) (figure 1), which is one of Gleaton's favorite photographs, it is the direction of glances that unites the three figures and the surrounding sea. At the same time, Gleaton is open to what happens in front of his camera without his intervention. The image of four girls against a wall observed by a fifth (Untitled, Peru) takes advantage of interaction among his subjects to frame an image that contains both a closely-composed group—what Gleaton calls the "central image"—and a single figure "outside the frame," looking on. “She creates the defining moment; the photograph is made by her reaction to the others."
There is a fine balance in Gleaton's work between naturalism and deliberate idealizing, between respecting the subject as seen and altering it for his own purposes. The angelic child in Sea of Dreams/Mar de Sueños (Oaxaca, Mexico), in fact, "looked liked every other kid in the village —dirty, disheveled, caked with mud, her hair matted. . .What you see in a photograph is rarely what really is. We give it meaning."
Gleaton takes great pleasure in photographing black skin, in water and under varying conditions of light. Portraits in which his subjects are posed in deep shadow can be seen, he says, as visual puns on the issue of invisibility: "I take their pictures, but it's futile, because they're still invisible." At the same time, he wants the light to be flattering, not harsh. In Black Girl, White Flower / NinaNegra, Flor Blanca (Belize), for example, Gleaton cropped the negative to intensify the image and to enhance its "romanticism—very, very dark skin that goes into deep shadow, ebony skin in sunlight." The young boy in the water (Untitled, Colombia) is "a river nymph, his body glistens so much. The critical point of focus is where a bead of water drops against his hand, like a diamond against his skin."
Gleaton deals with light in the process of printing as well, as in The Chicken Seller/La Polleria (Guerrero, Mexico). Although the scene was photographed using all natural light, Gleaton wanted the row of chickens evenly lit from front to back without contradicting the light/dark contrast of the actual situation; he accomplished this in printing. In his photograph of a Nicaraguan preacher in his church, he posed the man in the choir loft holding the Bible; "the image is completely backlit; the final print was dodged (selectively shaded in the printing) to light the head, the Bible burned in (intensified) so that you can see the text on the page.”
The "alternative iconography" that Gleaton seeks to create is, by his own admission, heavily influenced by Western, primarily European, art. He cites the l7th-century Italian painter Caravaggio, known for dramatic compositions and light, as a source for the low viewpoints he frequently employs; many of his compositions of mothers and children beg comparison with Italian Renaissance Madonnas, particularly those of Raphael. In more general terms, a number of photographs refer obliquely to the long history of European religious painting. In title as well as composition, his Ecstasy of St. Anne/Extasis de Santa Ana —a Guatemalan woman in her kitchen, her arms outstretched, a rack of pans forming a corona around her head—invokes this tradition in which, through the handling of light and use of symbolic iconography, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the secular, spiritual. More important than any specific prototype, however, is Gleaton's awareness of the types of imagery that characterize the Western art historical canon. He talks about the peripheral, even decorative, way in which blacks have frequently been portrayed in painting—often as the equivalent of elements in a still life—and stresses his intention to shift the spotlight, to create images of black people that carry the power of "classical" images, universal and timeless. Gleaton notes that in composing the striking image of a young fisherman in Oaxaca entitled Beloved of Aphrodite/El Amado de Afrodita (figure 2), he was particularly aware of his intent to "manifest this new iconography." Here, the focus is on a single black figure, dramatically posed and lit, seen from below, the classical idealizing of the image reflected in its title.
Gleaton feels that he has been influenced equally by film, which he believes has taught us that photographic images do not necessarily portray reality, thus countering the inherently convincing nature of photography. Asked about other artists who have particularly affected his work, he mentions photographers Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Roy de Carava. These are not surprising choices. Evans and Strand, whom John Berger calls "the great witnessing masters," worked during the period between the two world wars "when the photograph became the dominant and most natural way of referring to appearances . . .when photography was thought of as being most transparent, offering direct access to the real. . ." (Berger, About Looking, p. 48.) Evans' 1933 photographs of Havana include portraits of ordinary people, tradesmen, and beggars. Among these, images in which subjects are posed frontally, sometimes against a background of decorative grillwork or behind barred windows, are particularly close to Gleaton's work, as is one showing the interior of a barbershop. (Keller, Walker Evans, p, 89.) Strand, too, whose work in Ghana Gleaton particularly admires, produced remarkable portraits—formal, frontal, subjects looking directly at us, backgrounds serving as identifying and enhancing extensions of figures. (Berger, p. 43.) As in Gleaton's photographs, one senses the trust between subject and photographer that permits those being photographed to present themselves openly and without pretense. Roy de Carava's photographs of African American life, recently seen in a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also include close-up portraits that are superficially similar to Gleaton's. One suspects, however, that it is the older photographer's technical brilliance, the seductive shadows and dramatic lighting of his images, that attract Gleaton to his work.
Gleaton's photographs derive from a broad range of sources, serve a variety of interests, and can be seen in many ways. On the most basic level, they are journals of his travels, documents of an enormously complex project that has occupied fifteen years already and is still underway. Taking photographs is one of the ways that Gleaton interacts with the people that interest him, and the importance of the relationship between photographer and subject can be discerned in the images--faces responding to the fact of being photographed. These are individual portraits and, taken together, a collective homage to the largely unrecognized African Diaspora in Latin America.
They are the work of a photographer interested both in the social and political realities of the subject and in the opportunity it offers for an artist to revisit, draw from, and simultaneously reframe longstanding iconographic tradition. And because they are pictures of people of color at a time when racial unrest continues to plague our communities, some will inevitably see in them a political agenda, believe them to be primarily "about" color, about class. It is worth noting that similarly observed images of white subjects would be unlikely to raise these issues. Above all, however, these are works of art that stand above individual elements and influences that can be discerned within them. More than the sum of their parts, they are, ultimately, what we make of them. And if Gleaton has his way, what we make of them will derive from both form and content, from both art and thought.
Sources: John Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon) 1980. Judith Keller, Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum), 1995.
Reflections on Racial Construction in Latin America
by Sidney Lemelle andMiguel Tinker Salas
Representations of mestizaje, the biological and cultural intermixing of Indigenous and Spanish peoples, have dominated traditional views of race in Latin America. In light of the cataclysmic demise of millions of Indigenous peoples resulting from disease, war, and exploitative labor relations, the issue of racial mixing is one of great significance. For the past five hundred years, the Latin American racial experience has been framed by the continued intermixing of Indigenous peoples with Africans, Europeans, and Asians. Yet, contrary to popular perceptions, miscegenation is not indicative of Spanish or Portuguese tolerance toward race, but rather an outcome of the European conquest of the region.
Paradoxically, the process of mestizaje has been used to obscure the existence of racism in Latin America, as well as the presence of people who trace their ancestry to the African continent. Miscegenation did not eradicate racial distinctions, or the underlying racial tensions that exist within these societies. Moreover, intermixing did not produce a uniform national character, but a complex racial layering in which multiple racial, ethnic, gender, and regional identities have coexisted.
During the colonial period, people of African ancestry could be found throughout Latin America, from Mexico in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south. In 1553, Viceroy Luis Velasco sought prohibition of blacks in Mexico City, where they outnumbered other groups. Although records remain sketchy, it is believed that between ten and fifteen thousand Africans from the western and central regions of the continent were forcibly removed and taken to Latin America during the colonial period.
As was the case with Indigenous groups, the great majority of people of African ancestry constituted the backbone of the colonial labor system, where they toiled either as slaves or as free laborers engaged in a host of occupations. The notion that racial mixing in Latin America or the presence of a powerful Catholic Church somehow mitigated against the character or severity of slavery in the region is not borne out by the historical record. From their capture in Africa to their sale in the Americas, slaves encountered continuous trauma, in particular the so-called "middle passage" between Africa and Latin America.
Slavery represented a racialized class and gender relationship between a group of male planters who owned slaves, and an exploited class of male and female slaves. The colonial state, whether Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, or British, regulated and controlled slavery through laws that were at best severe, inadequate, ineffective, and contradictory, The slave system, and the laws that legitimized it, sought to dehumanize slaves—ostensibly making them look upon themselves as less than human. In many instances, this led to self-hatred, and ultimately divided Africans against one another. The ruling class manipulated this mistrust to prevent uprisings.
By the 17th century, the Spanish colonial authorities in Latin America devised a complex and, on the surface, absurd "caste system" by which they categorized people of color in the region. At best, colonial racial classification proved imprecise, but it succeeded in obscuring the persistent relationship between race and class. By and large, people of color continued to occupy the lower socioeconomic positions in the society and class remained one of the most important bases of social differentiation.
Most people, then as now, did not construct their racial or ethnic identity according to the
dictates of the colonial state authorities. Recent studies indicate that despite the existence of
"official" racial categories, most Latin Americans in practice rejected the caste system and
identified as Indigenous, Africans, Mulattos, Mestizos, or Europeans. Beyond their participation in economic production, people of African ancestry invigorated the culture of the region, contributing to the language, music, religion, diet, clothing, and a host of other areas that are central today to the fabric of Latin American culture.
The issue of cultural resistance is particularly apparent in the historic origins of religions such as Santeria in Cuba, Candomble in Brazil, and Voodoo in Haiti, which represent the survival of West African cultures in the New World. These religions demonstrate the forces of syncretization between Iberian Catholicism and Yoruba, Igbo, Mandinka, Congolese, and Arara religious traditions. Santeria, for example, provided a psychological defense for slaves and freed people of color from the brutality of slavery, racial discrimination, and violence. Catholicism tolerated folk practices, particularly the veneration of saints and prayers. Common people viewed saints as beings who had miraculous powers, who functioned as healers and spiritual guides.
The West African basis of Santeria, Candomble, and Voodoo owes much to demographics. In Cuba, for example, from the mid-19th century onward, seven out of fifteen slaves imported to the island were women. As a result, there were more slave families to reproduce the culture. By 1865, 75 percent of Cuba's black population had been born in Africa, producing a mixing of different peoples of West and Central Africa. Many were of Yoruban descent, and preserved their ancestral religious ideas and practices against great odds. Exposure to Spanish Catholicism did not radically change the nature of Yoruba influence in Santeria. Yoruban gods simply took on a co-identity; names and figures were syncretized with Catholic saints. Santeria survived in the countryside as well as in the cities of Cuba. In the countryside, the Catholic Church remained weak, with few priests or schools. Over the years, Christianizing forces declined and Santeria survived among rural and urban slaves in the cabildos, as well as in the Maroon communities. As was the case with Candomble in Brazil, many Europeans eventually incorporated the practices and beliefs of Santeria by the mid-19th century.
Thus, Candomble, Voodoo, and other African religions in the New World have similar histories. In this context, religion became a form of resistance; it demonstrated an angry defiance of the status quo and the slaves' desire to reclaim their own destiny. As such, black resistance has a rich and deep history, occupying a special place for many in the New World.
In addition to cultural and religious manifestations, resistance to Spanish authorities took the form of open rebellions against the inhumane conditions of slavery. People
of African ancestry formed free communities in Brazil (Quilombos), Mexico (Palenques), and in the Caribbean (Maroon/Cimarron). The largest of these rebel communities in Brazil--Quilombo dos Palmares--resisted Portuguese invaders for close to seventy years. A slave rebellion in Haiti in 1792 represented the first successful attempt at independence in the Caribbean and Latin American from European colonial domination. Despite ongoing cultural and political resistance, a dominant colonial aesthetic developed, which identified power and modernity with light skin in Latin America. This colonial ideology continues to inform race relations in the region today.
Even after most Latin American nations achieved independence from Spain during the 1820s, European cultural and racial norms persisted. The elites who assumed control of independent Latin American nations became enamored with notions of race and progress promoted by European and U.S. imperialism, and implemented these policies in their own countries. As part of their view of modernization, many Latin American countries sought to promote European immigration to facilitate economic development and "whiten" the population. The arrival of millions of European immigrants reduced the small gains being made by people of African descent, who continued to occupy the lower socioeconomic positions in the society.
Confronting exclusion by those in power, people of African ancestry in Latin America organized political and cultural movements throughout the region by the beginning of the 20th century. In Cuba, blacks organized the Partido de Color—the Party of Color—and challenged the exclusionist policies of the post-independent regime. In Brazil, they formed the Black United Front and engaged in electoral politics. Throughout the Caribbean, black authors joined the Negritude movement, which initially addressed cultural contributions and then turned to political empowerment. Despite these efforts, most Latin American elites continued to promote a broad image of nationalism that defused racial, ethnic and gender differences.
How people of African ancestry construct their identity in Latin America varies from region to region. The application of U.S. concepts of race to Latin America fails to capture the complexity of this issue in the region. As a social construction, race and racial identity are fluid. They are influenced by a group's historical experiences, the legacy of de facto or de jure segregation, demographics, cultural norms, socioeconomic conditions, prevailing concepts of nationalism, and other factors. As a result of these diverse experiences, no broad-based pan-racial or pan-ethnic identity has arisen in Latin America, either among people of African ancestry or the Indigenous.
Even in nations where blacks represent a significant percentage of the population, such as Brazil or the Dominican Republic, a distinct Afro-Latino identity has yet to fully take shape. Yet, people of African ancestry in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America have left their cultural and genetic imprint everywhere they have lived.
In Cuba and Brazil, the African influence is unmistakable at a national level; in many areas of Mexico, however, the influence is not always apparent. In Mexican coastal states, such as Veracruz, Jalisco, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, the African presence is more readily discernible. Yet these people no longer frame their identity along African ethnic lines; rather, it is based on their regional experiences. For example, people of African ancestry along the southern coast of Guerrero refer to themselves as costeños (coastal people), morenos (brown-skin), and triguehos (light brown skin) and, at a broader level, as Mexicanos (Mexican). Identity at this level is situational, defined by regional experiences and interaction with others.
Since the late 1970s, buffeted by severe economic crisis, state-sponsored nationalist programs have proved unable to unite broad segments of the population. The last two decades have witnessed a resurgence of racial, gender, ethnic, and cultural-based political movements which, unlike those of the past, are being led by the Indigenous and people of African descent. These movements demand not only recognition of the contributions of people of African descent to Latin America, but they also seek to redress decades of political and economic injustice. On a broader plane, the presence of these new movements has brought into question the meaning of national identity in societies that continued to be plagued by racial and economic inequality.
Becoming Visible Foriando Presencia
