OFRAMING

OOURSELVES

by Ana NaddafPhotos Roberto Machado

OFRAMINGOURSELVESIdentity construction through portraits and narratives of Essex County College’s students

by Ana NaddafPhotos Roberto Machado

PROJECTstatement

Photography has always played an important role in portraying our ideas about race, ethnicity and self. The influence of photography in society is particularly observed in the early moments of Globalization because of its direct connection to the con-temporary production of visual culture. The photographic image also frames our

individual way to “see” the world. As the art historian Margaret Dikovitskaya points out, it is “the seeing of other people, and the experience of being seen.”

But how photography can construct our identities and reinforce concepts of race and na-tionality? Can we frame race? Can we frame ourselves? This project questions some of these issues through a review of the literature on sociological terms as identity (self-identification and social identity), race (racial classification) and ethnicity, but especially through a read-ing on images and relationships that some students of Essex County College produce from themselves or from the photographs of others. Those concepts were applied into practice through social ethnography with an artistic purpose.

This project-exhibition was developed in two parts. The first one is a collection of ten portraits of students from Essex County College. These pictures,a collaboration with the pho-tographer Roberto Machado, were produced in order to promote a discussion about iden-tification, similarities and differences. This imagery contentgained “the voice” of narratives to reinforce the construction of meanings and interpretations about identity and self-image. Most of the narratives start with an explanation about “who I see in the mirror”. This symbolic question was inspired by Horton Cooley’s “looking glass self” theory, where the “mirror” could generate descriptive images (or we could even say “reflections”) that the study group pro-duces about itself and about being see by others.

Later, another group of students was invited to observe the portraits+narratives and gen-erate their own opinion about them. In doing so, the project takes the viewer to a different direction: one less voyeristic and more socially engaged, in order to find different results between the visual effect for itself, and the connection between photography and narrations. The proposal was to analyze the act of visualizing racial differences and possible associa-tions of identities, following the statement of the Doctor in Visual Culture Coco Fusco that ”the act of visualizing and looking at racial difference continues to seduce and enthrall viewers.”

“My name is Mara Lijo, and I’m from Spain, in Galicia. When they ask me about my race, I say white Caucasian because there is what Europeans are considered, like the Portuguese, the Span-ish, the French usually they are considered to be Caucasian. My parents, all my single one is from Spain. Only now, that past gen-eration, there are people from another places. Now I have family from Canada, and even Chinese and African, because they were born in those countries. For me race should be more where you feel more comfortable, it is not where you were born. I guess that in some ways, if you go by the books, if you go by what society believes race should be I guess that you can say that I look Cau-casian, but personally I think race is something that comes from inside, not what it is portrayed as a person that you see in the mir-ror, not what you see in the picture.

“My name is Jade Jordan, and I am from United States. I de-scribe myself pretty much obviously physical traits like green eyes, black hair, dreadlocks. I identify myself as African American. I feel that people may be curious because I appear to be biracial, but I’m not. I just indentify myself as African American. I know that my great grandfather was Irish, and my great grandmother was part Cherokee, but no so back. I really want to do this genealogy thing and get the whole in depth. But race means nothing to me, pretty much. Because if you were from a race it is not necessarily means that you belong to one culture. Because you could be born in a race, but you born outside of the culture, so you do not have the same their values. So race pretty much is skin color to me.

“My name is Jozun Yasumura and I am from Brazil. Ah… in the mirror, as you can see, I am an Asian. My race is Asian. If I think about myself looking at the mirror, I am an Asian, unfortunately, or fortunately, I do not know (laughs). Because like myself, like in my heart, I am Brazilian, but the way I look myself in the mirror, I am an Asian. In the appearance, I mean. If I have to identity myself, I check Hispanic/Latino, South America, in those questionnaires. If I have another options, I will check Japanese/Asian and South America/Hispanic Latino. Actually, I was very confused about my background, because I was not sure. To tell you the truth, I am not Japanese either. I am from Okinawa that is an Island that today belongs to Japan. But you have different culture, different dialect, different costumes, different everything. Race for me it is biologi-cal appearance. That is the point because race, biological feature, I considered myself Asian. So ethnicity, I consider myself South-American, Latino, Brazilian. I am sure that they all confuse about my image. How come you are Brazilian with this Asian face. I do not blame people when they call me Asian, or even Chinese, or Korean. I don’t blame them because my appearance tells them that my background must be from Asia. But I prefer that people think or know that I am Brazilian.

“I am Tim Honeywell, from Bloomfield, New Jersey. I see myself as a typical young American man. I am a medium height, red hair, with a full beard, grey-blue eyes, and a large nose. As self-identi-fication, I choose White/Caucasian. I consider myself multiracial, and because that I also check Native American. I’m most asked if I am Irish, and I am not Irish at all. And I think people are not aware about my identity, or who I am. My ancestries came from Germany, Poland, Italy Netherlands, England, Wales, and the Native Ameri-can, Susquahanna. I enjoy the factor that I have a family that came from some different places, because to me being a citizen of the world it is not supposed tie myself just in a single group. I like my diversity and all the history and culture that it is behind it.

“My name is Wesley Venture, and I am originally from Guiana. I see myself as a good look person (laughs). I describe myself as a brown skin, black eyes… If I have to identify myself in a poll, I probably choose Black, but Caribbean/West Indian. Probably I can also described myself as interracial, but… I’m thinking back in the days where we are mixed. I do not know so much about my back-ground, only about my great grandmother who originally came from Barbados to Guiana, then she met my great grandfather. Race means nothing. Because to me, we are the same, we came from one place. We just came from different climates, where we had to adapt and because this we have different skin colors. We matched up with the environment.

“My name is Raydel Rijo, and I am from Cuba. I see in the mirror, a simple person, a student, a son. Physically, short, skinny, black hair, brown eyes, and I smile a lot. I would say that I identify myself as Hispanic/Latino. I have people asking me if I am Indian, or from Puerto Rico. I got people saying many things. And I say that I am from Cuba, they got surprised. Even I am from Cuban, my mother is black, and my father is light skin, white. So, I considered myself multiracial. But I just choose Hispanic, because it is the main ele-ment about me. But if I have I always try to explain why I considered myself black and white. I know that I have some Chinese descent, from my mother. From my father, I do not have any idea. Even I do not know so much, but we should know who your ancestors are. It is part of you, it is something that you should know where you come from. This is race for me, keep in mind that something that you are. Because, for example, I have Chinese ancestors, and I am biracial, and I have to put these all together.

“My name is Daniela Jorge, I am half Dominican, half Spanish. I see myself light skin, brown hair, brown eyes. I see my father too. Because that I identify myself as White/Caucasian. If I have to choose more that one race, probably I chose Caribbean/West Indian also. Actually, when people ask me where am I from, I say that I am Dominican. But they say that I do not look Dominican. So I explain that maybe because my father is Spanish. When some-one ask about my race, I just say White, and they do not ask me anything else. But I can considered myself also black because the father of my grandmother is black, from France. I have these three races/heritages. I think race is how people identify and divide them-selves, based in how they look, and where they come from.

“My name is Latifa Davis, and I am from Jersey City, New Jer-sey. My face? I think is pretty (laughs). I see a confident person. I described myself as an African American, because my nose, my lips, my brown skin. If I have to choose a race to identify myself I choose Black, as African American. As far as I know about my background it that my great grandmother was from Virginia. That is it. I do not really focus on race. I don’t think about that so much because it does not affect me. I do not look the world like that.

“My name is Barbara Duray, and I am from Orange, New Jersey. And my family is from Haiti, and I considered myself Haitian as well. When I look at the mirror, I see a young lady who is confident. Physically, I am 57”, brown skin, brown eyes, pretty natural, not much is going on as far as my look. Simple, natural. I am very happy now that they put Caribbean/West Indian. Because usually I have to choose, as self-identification, Black/African American, and I am not African American, I am black from the Caribbean. I think we all have background that sometimes we are not aware of. I know that my grandparents lived and were raised in Cuba, and I could chose also Hispanic or Latino. Unfortunately, I do not so much about my history, about my background. In my opinion, race is where are you from, who you are, what you represent. And, a lot of times, people in society do not take time to understand where people are from and their culture, so you usually judge people without know them. And I think we all have a history to share, and in the end of the day we are the same people. People ask me “where are you from”, “you do not look American”. I do not what an American should look like. They say that I am look very West Indian, or I do not look that way. But I try to explained them, let them know where I am from, who I am.

“I am Daniel Johnson, and I am from Newark, New Jersey. I do not really know how to describe myself. I mean, if I need to de-scribe myself physically, I describe myself obviously black, not that this is the big thing about me. I identity myself as Black / African American. Like my background, my ethnicity, for example, I know nothing. As far that I know, I am black. And for me it is just good enough. Race means nothing. I mean… whatever you are, I per-sonally do not care. As long you are ok whit you are, sounds right to me. I remember that we talk about this subject when I was a kid, but now no more. Maybe because race is not a big thing for me. I do not talk about my skin color or my race.

OAna Naddafananaddaf@hotmail.com

Roberto Machadorobertomachadobz@hotmail.com