University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Black Girl Gaze: Using Photography to Tell a Black Girl's Truth

Taaffee, Claudine Olivia

Content Files
Taaffe_ClaudineCandy.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/75879

Description

Title
Black Girl Gaze: Using Photography to Tell a Black Girl's Truth
Author(s)
Taaffee, Claudine Olivia
Contributor(s)
Brown, Ruth Nicole
Issue Date
2015-04
Keyword(s)
Education, Policy, Organization, and Leadership
Date of Ingest
2015-04-27T22:23:30Z
Abstract
In my work with Black girls, we use the camera as a tool for interrogating notions of power, voice and representation as articulated within education and popular culture. How we engage photography interrupts the binary of how photographs are typically used in research. We intentionally blur the lines that are suffocated inside binaries-us/them, the researcher/the researched, the center/the margins, girl/woman, teacher/ student, young/old- in an attempt to decolonize the stereotypes about Black girls. When reading our photographs, we privilege our own gaze in an effort to reclaim our voice, recognizing that what we see and how we talk about it is vital to our survival. In doing this work, we take our place inside a broader legacy of self-determination work engaged by Black women for centuries past and for centuries to come, with our photographs serving as documentation that we were here.
Type of Resource
  • text
  • image
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/75879
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2015 Claudine Candy Taaffe

Owning Collections

Image of Research - Graduate Students PRIMARY