The Power of Imagery Explored at FIT’s Social Justice Center Luncheon
Three highly influential creative forces unpacked “The Power of Imagery” in its many dimensions, including omission, during an afternoon discussion at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning senior critic at large Robin Givhan, The HistoryMakers’ founder and president Julieanna Richardson and film, TV and theater producer Debra Martin Chase joined FIT president Dr. Joyce Brown in the 90-minute talk at the school’s Social Justice Center luncheon.
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Having gotten into the film and television business because of imagery, Richardson, a three-time Tony winner and a three-time Emmy nominee, explained, “When I was a child, I didn’t see people who looked or felt like me…As I got older, I realized the power of imagery was both what you saw, which in those days was very stereotypical, and what I didn’t see.”
Recalling how she knew nothing about fashion when she started covering it, Givhan said she learned through reporting. “I was so stunned that everything went by so quickly that you didn’t really have a sense to digest everything. But it taught me that you can still learn so much from the glimpse of an image and the longer that you have with that image, the more it tells you a story. Sometimes it’s a story that the creator of the image wanted to convey, and sometimes the image just takes on a life of its own,” she said.
Learning how to read visual language through fashion, Givhan noted how she also applies that tool to writing about politics in more expansive ways and the arts in general. She added that “all of the details that people consciously and sometimes unconsciously create in their own visions of themselves, when they walk out the door, in many ways explain how we relate to each other.”
When starting “The HistoryMakers,” a digital archive of the African American community, Richardson said, it was very important that people be videotaped so that “you didn’t have to guess what they looked like. You could see the twinkling in their eyes, the pensive looks or the laughter that could emerge.”
Throughout the talk, shots of global image makers like Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Queen Latifah and Condoleezza Rice flashed on a screen. Photos of Brown’s mother, who was a dancer at The Cotton Club, and her grandmother, who was a costume designer, were also in the gallery.
The audience included such style arbiters as Tracy Reese, Jeffrey Banks, B Michael, Elie Tahari, Alva Chinn, Deborah Roberts, Mark-Anthony Edwards, Teri Agins, Harriette Cole, Edvin Thompson, Chuks Collins, Constance R. White, Ralph Rucci and Fern Mallis.
Asked how they held onto “their personal power and had the confidence,” Chase recalled how she and Richardson attended law school together and “knew how to cook ramen noodles every which way in their dorm room kitchen,” She said, “I am so proud of her, [pausing to collect herself]. It’s a long way from the ramen noodles, but it was a fight…my theme in most of my work is that we all have the power to do and be whatever we want to be, if we have the vision…but it’s not easy for any of us.”
The 1997 television film “Cinderella” with a Black lead was “the hardest thing that she ever produced, because they weren’t ready,” Chase said. “That was huge for me because I knew what seeing a Black Cinderella would have meant to me as a little girl.”
“The Cheetah Girls” show, the film “The Princess Diaries” and its sequels, the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet” and the documentary “Being Mary Tyler Moore” are among her other credits. Her Broadway play “Purpose” starts previews next week.
Recalling her nine-month stint at Vogue, Givhan described being asked by an employee if she had been surprised that Vogue had reached out to her about a job. “I said, ‘No,’ and they were so stunned. I had said that I’d been covering the fashion industry and I think I’m really good at it. So it wasn’t that surprising. That moment encapsulated this dividing line between confidence and hubris — between how confident that you are allowed to be, and how much confidence is presumed to be you’re-being-too-big-for-your-britches,” she said.
Speaking of her own career challenges, Chase highlighted how Los Angeles is “a very segregated city” with only about 9 percent of the population being Black. She said that she realized early on in her career that “to a certain extent most of the studio executives were white and male. They were putting up images and telling stories that reflected their reality. They knew me but they weren’t inviting me to their houses. They knew their LatinX gardener and nanny, but they didn’t have anybody that sat at their dinner table.”
Chase suggested that part of the change in Hollywood that is needed is to make people conscious of the messages that they are putting out, “and not just doing what they’re comfortable doing.” She described once pitching the head of a studio with a “Princess Diaries”-type project featuring Selena Gomez, who responded with a straight face, “I don’t get this. She’s Mexican. How can she be in Europe like a princess?” Chase said.
Later in the discussion, Givhan spoke of how impactful former White House photographer Pete Souza’s image of Barack Obama bowing to let a little boy touch his hair was. She also noted a photo of Harris stepping out of a car and being surrounded by Secret Service officers. “Someone pointed out that the establishment is charged with protecting this Black woman. That’s a lot, and for some people it’s too much,” she said. “When you look at images, it’s not just the positives that images might inspire, but also the fear and the discomfort. A lot of people are not curious. Instead of wanting to know more about the possibility, they recoil and cut off the possibility.”
Chase later said, “It’s even more powerful because it’s non-verbal. You’re just absorbing images. Kids are just absorbing images. They’re in your conscious and subconscious.”
Givhan added, “And you’re filling in the blanks.”
When panelists were asked what advice they would give their 5-year-old selves, Chase spoke of the importance of “moving forward.” Using Mary Tyler Moore as an example, she said most people associate the actress with her smile and her hat (being thrown into the air), but the actress had “kept moving forward, challenging herself as an artist and reaching out for hope and love, despite having enormous tragedy in her life.”
During the Q&A period, Richardson made a pitch for archives. “I started to look at our nation’s museums’ archives, and they don’t have Black people in them. And I’m talking about the Smithsonian. More importantly, they have a lot of racially insensitive material. Why does blackface keep appearing? Instead of doing an historical analysis, I want to ask, ‘Where is this practiced?’”
Noting how images, the lack of images and practiced traditions permeate throughout society and the world, she said, “Unless we change this, people will not critically look at themselves in a way that needs to be looked at. We cannot feed a melting pot unless we have all of the ingredients in the pot.”
Richardson added, “My thing right now is, ‘How do we raise people, the people who are doing it right, up?’”
Before the program wound down, Givhan spoke of her recent President’s Day visit to the National Museum of African American History’s galleries that deal with the slave trade, the Middle Passage and “the darkest parts of American history.” Struck by how crowded it was “with young, old, Black and white people,” and how they were rapt by a white-haired white female guide, who encouraged questions and responded in “a very precise and caring way,” Givhan said she left the museum thinking, “‘OK, we are not that fragile. We are not as fragile as some in this administration would have us believe. And there is a way forward.’”
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