Images of Hip Hop, African Origins and Black Fashion

By Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor

Talk about Black Arts! Click here.

The vibrant images by Ernie Paniccioli in "Who Shot Ya?: Three Decades of Hip Hop Photography" are a visual history of the artists who created the most dominant musical movement of the past 25 years. Paniccioli’s photos, which have appeared in magazines like The Source and VIBE, are a combination of photojournalism, snapshot and paparazzi fervor. This book is best thought of as a series of portraits that are raw and uncontrived, just as hip hop was born to be.

The strength of his collection is its breadth, the capturing of so many popular artists by one single man determined to capture icon and moments. Collectively, his images are an animated record of hip hop’s postures and fashions like Kangol hats, slip-off-your-butt baggy pants, door knocker earrings, medallions and the ever-present huge gold chain, which has gotten smaller and smaller as years have gone by. (Maybe you also forgot that TLC once wore condoms sewed onto their pants.)

Its weakness is the preponderance of posed snapshots that do not convey the energy of the music, performance, dance and heat of the genre. Despite the fact that the "pose’ is central to hip hop style, this collection is not hip hop’s equivalent of the great photographs of jazz artists, which depicted not just the artists but also something about their soul and environment. Powell’s lively introductory essay reminds us that the hip hop generation is America’s forgotten generation, those who were forgotten after the "Great Society" ended and urban-based factories relocated overseas. He argues that the soul of hip hop has been the ability of these artists to "cast their buckets into dirty sewer water" and come up with hope, new identities, fly names, def jams…" Pannicioli’s challenge is to capture more of that productive and hopeful energy.

Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art," 1000 Fifth Ave., New York City, until April 13. www.metmuseum.org

Stunning examples of Africa’s ceremonial and ritual-based carvings are included in "Genesis," which is designed to illuminate how Africans have explored ideas of creation and the beginnings of families, kingdoms, agriculture and other institutions. To that end, curator Alisa LaGamma has included, most notably, a rich selection of sweeping and antlered Ci Wara headdresses, utilized in rituals for agriculture by the Bamana peoples of Mali. A video presentation and life-sized display of complete ritual costume illustrate how sculptures were used in the community. This Ci Wara section is the strongpoint of the show, which is housed into the section of the museum dedicated to the art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

"Genesis" falls short, however, in its stated purpose to explore African ideas of creation through sculpture. Though inspired by the discovery last year of ochre engravings and tools at the Blombos Cave Project in South Africa, which demonstrated to European scholars that a "creative explosion" occurred in humans before they migrated to Europe, there are no examples or even photographs of the artifacts in the show or catalogue. The exhibit includes only brief attention to the Yoruba people’s extensive belief system and many sculptures related to it. Similar beliefs of neighboring peoples of West and Central Africa are also omitted. One particularly irksome information panel about "Objects of Power" in the Congo, which should have certainly started with a description of the displayed Nkisi sculpture, instead begins with a lengthy description of the importance of the Christian crucifix after colonialism.

The omission of so many African ideas that have been expressed in sculpture could be due to the museum’s stated goal to include "superb artistic creations," which means that the curators were less interested in a thorough presentation than in sculpture included the Western-created canon of African art. Perhaps many sculpture were not considered "superb" by the form and design standards used to categorize the art of African peoples. "Genesis" is worth exploring. It’s just too bad that the Met’s limited vision couldn’t really give such African ideas their full due.

Threads of Time: The Fabric of History

By Rosemary E. Reed Miller, (Toast and Strawberries Press, www.toastandstrawberries.com)

Black fashion designers aren’t often given their due in the space of columns about art, or much of anywhere. But Rosemary Reed Miller, African American owner of a boutique in Washington, DC called Toast and Strawberries, aims to change that with the self-publication of this compact and informative book. Beginning with Black designers of the 1950’s and spanning to the present, Miller profiles 16 designers, including Ann Cole Lowe, who designed the wedding dress for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. A photo of the stylish Lowe graces the cover and many historical photographs of designers, models and other fashionheads add to the richness of the pages. Threads of Time also offer a chronology off how or ideas have changed about culture, fashion and clothing as art.

Esther Iverem's reviews often appear on BET.com and Africana.com.

-- March 28, 2003

© Copyright 2001-04 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.