In 1985, Arthur Ashe’s widow, the photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, published a historical survey that she called Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. Viewfinders chronicled the work of the (largely disregarded) black female photographers that Moutoussamy-Ashe had meticulously unearthed, dating back to 1866. Now, 30 years after Moutoussamy-Ashe’s book, two Brooklyn-born photographers are picking up where she left off, with Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, an anthology featuring the work of more than 100 female photographers of African descent from around the world.
The idea took root over a decade ago on a spring day in 2006, as a pair of best friends sat on the living room floor of an apartment in Crown Heights, flipping through Viewfinders. “Imagine if we had a book of all female black photographers. Imagine that,” Adama Delphine Fawundu recalled musing aloud to Laylah Amatullah Barryn.
Fawundu and Barryn fell in love with Viewfinders early in their careers. They regarded it as a bible of sorts, and treasured how it cataloged and highlighted the work of women artists whom they admired. But they also chafed at its singular existence. “A Forgotten Group of photographers Is Revealed in Black and White,” read one 1986 review of the book. “Forgotten” was an descriptor Barryn and Fawundu were determined to avoid.
Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora is named after Mmekutmfon “Mfon” Essien, an acclaimed Nigerian-born photographer who died of breast cancer in 2001, at age 34. Fawundu and Essien had worked together in the past; the two were set to show their work together at the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s exhibition “Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers” in 2001. But Essien passed away the day before the show’s opening.
“It’s one thing to make images, but I think Laylah and I both have this thing in us—we want to do more: to preserve, to document, to make sure that when we are not here on this earth, the work is living beyond us,” Fawundu said. The book also features an introduction written by Dr. Deborah Willis, the chair of NYU’s photo and imaging department and a leading scholar and historian on African-American photographers; a preface by the Brooklyn-based curator Niama Safia Sandy; and essays by Catherine McKinley, La Tanya S. Autry, and Fayemi Shakur.
Publishers passed on their initial idea a decade ago: No one had heard of them; they couldn’t raise the money to self-publish. But last year, after winning a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and a successful crowdfunding campaign, the two decided to take matters into their own hands.
Barryn and Fawundu plan for the compilation to be the first in a series of biannual photographic journals, culled from a list of more than 100 black female photographers they’ve been collecting since 2006. The book is now available for order on their website and in select museum bookstores. Below, they spoke with Vogue about forgoing the Western gaze, seeking out forgotten talent, and using art to change hearts and minds.
Nikon was recently criticized after they selected 32 men and zero women to participate in an advertising campaign to promote a new camera. Women are underrepresented across the board, and black women even more so—you’re actually publishing this book yourselves, which I think speaks to the problem at hand. Did you try pitching the book to a publisher?
Laylah Amatullah Barryn: The first time around, we did try going the traditional route with finding an agent and publisher. But this time we wanted to do it on our terms, our way. So we decided to get some funding—we said, “Let’s get a grant.” We couldn’t afford to depend on the whims of whatever editor, so we didn’t even pitch anyone. It was like, this is how we’re going to do it, so let’s do it. So first we got a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to start us up, and then we crowdfunded.
Adama Delphine Fawundu: You know what’s the most beautiful thing that’s happening with this? We have become this grassroots organization of women photographers of the African diaspora. It’s feeling like we have become some type of umbrella organization. We have this huge database now and are actually interacting with these women to continue to take their work to the next level.
Laylah, you’ve said that you don’t want to hear another person say they didn’t know any female black photographers.
Barryn: It’s amazing that people say that—and they really do! But it says something about our social circles. If you don’t have that diversity in your social circle and professional circles, that is something you really need to think about and question.
The book feels like more than just a celebration of black women. It feels like a statement of wanting to be included in a conversation that seems to have excluded black women photographers for quite some time.
Barryn: Yeah. But for us, that’s secondary, because we don’t do things as a reaction to being excluded. Our first thing is to just have this record, this document. And the other thing that was very important to us was to look at an international diaspora without borders. Women of African descent across the globe. A lot of times we’re not looked upon as a collective group: It’s like, continental Africans are over here; African-Americans over here; Afro-Europeans over here; Caribbeans and South Americans over here. But really, it’s a contiguous family. There’s a connection there. We wanted to present the work in that framework. And to present something that hasn’t been done in terms of having black women highlighted in the industry at large.
I’d love to know more about some of the stories behind these images. Are there any that stand out in your minds?
Fawundu: Nydia Blas’s work is so striking. I love the title of the series The Girls Who Spun Gold. It’s really looking at what it’s like to be in this body. And the social implications and expectations of being in this body but then creating this magical world that empowers them. These girls are magical in their own way. Like the photo of the women rubbing honey on her belly—where does that honey come from?
What about the photo of James Baldwin holding court at a kitchen table with a copy of his book off to the side?
Barryn: That photo of Baldwin was actually taken by Michelle Agins, one of the longest-running staff photographers at The New York Times—talk about unsung! She has been at The New York Times since 1989 and a photographer since the 1970s. She’s a real pioneer, and we hardly hear anything about her. She’s documented New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, every major city as a journalist. We were really hoping she’d participate in our book, and she said of course. She really wanted to showcase the Baldwin image.
You’ve included photographers from all over the globe, from different cultures who have taken a camera upon themselves. How does this challenge the Western idea of photography?
Fawundu: If we’re talking about the Western gaze—if you look at the history of photography, and people who are non-white, or people of African descent who are being photographed, the tradition was: Let’s use this tool to create a document of who those people are, to tell [Westerners] about them and for people to grade the “subject.” Even back in the late 1800s, people [of African descent] said, “This is a tool that can be used against us, or for us.” You had people—black people in America—who said, “Listen, I’m going to use this tool to show people who I am.” So we can look at photography from the Western perspective, or people who are using it to say this is who we are, to communicate to the masses.
Someone like Frederick Douglass, for example, who used the camera to photograph himself so that people around the country could see what a black man looks like. You don’t have to be in the condition that you are. Success is possible. So what we are doing is following that tradition, which is saying: “This is who we are, [these are] issues we are concerned about.”
How many photographers are included in the book and what did the selection process look like?
Barryn: One hundred and 18 photographers. We made a list, and we just kept adding to the list. Everyone we knew, everyone we heard of, everyone we came in contact with through our travels. And then, when it was time to reach out to people, we just referenced the list.
Which you started in 2006?
Fawundu: Yep, we still have the mark up of that original list. We had been collecting names and keeping in touch with people along the way. And we wanted to include everybody. We were trying to be more inclusive than exclusive.
How far back does your book go?
Barryn: The oldest photographer in our book is 91, and the youngest one is 15. We are intergenerational.
Fawundu: Our book is not chronological—it’s more of a diverse representation of women who are doing this work from the African diaspora.
I imagine it must have been difficult to get a hold of photographers in places like Ethiopia, where the government imposed a total Internet blackout around the country for an extended period of time this past year.
Barryn: Yes! When it was time for some of the Ethiopian photographers to send their work, they couldn’t, because the government shut down the Internet during state exams. Some of their friends from London and South Africa had their work and sent it to us for them. Everyone is pretty much digitized, so we were able to connect with mostly everyone across the globe.
Laylah, I had the pleasure of working (and shopping) with you as fellows in Zanzibar with the International Women’s Media Foundation. How has your time traveling throughout Africa influenced your work today?
Barryn: I’ve been traveling back and forth to the continent since 1999. My first trip to Senegal was as a student, but I was also there documenting the community and connecting to my ancestral land and a nation where I share similar religious and spiritual practices. The West African coast is where my extended family is from. That was a very fortifying experience for me as a person and photographer . . . Cairo, Johannesburg, Lagos. I’ve been to tons of places documenting and learning about how dynamic the African continent is.
Fawundu: I’m first generation from Sierra Leone, and visited for the first time in 1992. Just being there and being in love with the landscape and people—it was a natural thing to photograph . . . it made me make that decision to be a photographer.
What’s the one thing you would tell anyone buying this book or considering buying this book?
Fawundu: What I would say is don’t gloss over it. Take time with the photographers, and with the women that you know, or don’t know. These images are charged with layers and layers of emotion. As a photographer, I go back and spend time with these images. Make this be the launching pad for new discovery and knowledge. The more open-minded you are as human beings, the more human we become.
This conversation has been condensed and edited.