The most inspirational part of my study abroad in Paris was going to the Louvre. I was
immediately taken aback by how large their collection of paintings was, but while looking
around, I realized that almost all of the subjects depicted were white. None of them looked like
me, an Afro-Latina with tan skin and curly hair. What would have been a fun museum trip for
most people became an eye-opening experience that made me think about representation in art
history in a way I never had before.
Most art history classes heavily focus on the western art canon, specifically Europe;
these traditional paintings are considered masterpieces and are the basis of how we learn, and are
taught to analyze and consume art. They serve as representations of the time's beauty standards
and depicted the ways of society. So when you only teach students about art that excludes black,
asian, and idiginous people, it sends a message that we are not meant to be regarded in the same
way or held to the same standard. This is all completely ignoring the fact that black slaves used
to be painted into the background of dutch paintings to elevate the social status of their white
owners, or how orientalism white washed and fetishised middle-easterm/asian culture.
Despite the progress we have made as a society, we still see cases of cultural appropriation
and racism in art today due to the lack of proper education about these issues. Photography as an
art medium has a similar racist history. For example, the way that Kodak for years made color
film that did not properly show dark skin tones up until the mid-1990s. Or how photographers
would travel and purposely take people of different cultures out of their native environments to a
studio and pose them with props to make them look more “exotic”. Photography is known for its
ability to capture reality, but when that reality can easily be manipulated and distorted, it can
have extremely negative effects when it comes to the representation of marginalised groups. This
gives the medium huge responsibility as it shapes the way people view others in society, relying
on the truth it brings.
Taking into consideration the idea of manipulation in photography, I believe that with
modern technology, photography has the unique ability to imitate many different types of art. So,
by using this, I decided to rewrite history and make photographs inspired by some of the
paintings that I had seen at the Louvre. I built large sets and made props for each photo, then
made final alterations in Photoshop. These photographs are intended to be printed on canvas with
baroque style framing, to closely resemble the way a painting would be hung in a museum.
Recently it feels as though the idea of representation of people of color is a modern concept; by
going back in time and placing them in classical paintings, I want to remind people that people of
color have been around for centuries. That we were always beautiful and worthy of this kind of
representation. The themes of the paintings I chose represent ideas such as grief, fragility, wealth,
love, and strength; associations that are rarely seen with people of color in the media and
especially classical paintings.
