Film Synopsis

 

In Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce wrote: “history is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”  ”Through A Lens Darkly” is about contemporary African American artists probing the recesses of the American nightmare by interrogating images of stories suppressed, forgotten, and lost; and how they engage African American history in their work.  Artists include among others: Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Lyle Ashton Harris, Hank Willis Thomas, Coco Fusco, Anthony Barboza, Clarissa Sligh, and Deborah Willis. 

The film will interweave contemporary artists discussing their inspirations and creative process with the stories of pioneering Black men and women photographers, whose images helped reclaim the collective self-worth and humanity of African Americans.  Moving between the realms of the present and the past, “Through A Lens Darkly” will reveal Black photography as an instrument for social change, as a pointed African American perspective on American history, and as a particularized aesthetic vision.  

Our hope is that “Through A Lens Darkly” will provoke contemporary audiences to think simultaneously about the progressive and repressive capabilities of photography.  For instance; how do we begin to think critically about images of Black people, of Black history, and about images in general?  How much are our ideas about race supported and constructed by photographic images that we believe to be true or that we assume to be true without understanding how constructed they are?  In the words of one artist, “This is an issue of visual literacy.  An image is never just an image.  It has a background, a context, a history.”  

”Through A Lens Darkly” will encourage audiences to interact with images and image making in new, exciting, and transformative ways.

 

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