8. W. E. B. DuBois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis (Oct. 1926); repr. in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York, 1994), p. 103.

9. Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation (June 23, 1926); repr. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (note 8), p. 95.

10. Romare Bearden, “The Negro Artist and Modern Art,” Opportunity (Dec. 1934); repr. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (note 8), p. 141.

11. Regina Joseph, “Lorna Simpson Interview,” Balcon 5, 6 (1990), pp. 35–39.

12. Quoted in ibid., p. 35.

13. See Lowery Stokes Sims, “The Mirror the Other,” Art Forum 28, 7 (Mar. 1990), pp. 111–15, in which the author discussed Simpson’s work, especially the anonymity of her sitters.

14. On the synedochal effect of Simpson’s work, see Kellie Jones, “In Their Own Image,” Art Forum 29, 3 (Nov. 1990), p. 135.

15. I wish to thank Pamela M. Lee, Professor of Art History at Stanford University, for suggesting that the text be read backward.

16. Judith Wilson, “Beauty Rites: Toward an Anatomy of Culture in African American Women’s Art,” The International Review of African American Art 11, 3 (fall 1994), pp. 11–55.

17. For another discussion of hair, see Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle (New York, 1994), pp. 97–128.

18. I wish to thank Carrie Mae Weems for her generosity in speaking with me. Our conversation took place in Sept. 1998.

19. Quoted in Susan Benner, “A Conversation with Carrie Mae Weems,” Art Week 23 (May 7, 1992), p. 5.

20. On “signifyin’,” see Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey (New York, 1988), pp. xix–xxviii.

I wish to thank Michael Sittenfeld, former editor of The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, and Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Curator in the Department of Africa and the Americas, at The Art Institute of Chicago, for encouraging me to find my voice. I would also like to thank Professor Alex Nemerov, Lela Graybill, and Tirza Latimer at Stanford University; Andrea D. Barnwell, Kirsten P. Buick, and Amy M. Mooney at the Art Institute; and Professor Kate Ezra at Columbia College, Chicago, for reading drafts of this essay. In addition, I thank Professor Leah Dickerman for her constructive criticism. I also appreciate Professor Suzanne Lewis’s sage advice and Ruben Ramirez’s patience and confidence.

1. For more discussion of this phenomenon, see Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Toward an Investigation),” in Video Culture, ed. John G. Hanhardt (Layton, Ut., 1986), pp. 56–95.

2. Allan Sekula, “Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation),” in idem, Photography Against the Grain (Halifax, 1984), p. 56.

3. Richard Dyer, “The Role of Stereotypes,” in idem, The Matter of Images (London, 1993), p. 12. For more discussion of stereotypes, see Homi Bhabha, “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture, eds. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Cornel West (New York, 1990), pp. 71–87.

4. Brian Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Slave Daguerreotypes,” American Art 9, 2 (summer 1995), pp. 39–61.

5. Shortly after the invention of photography, nearly 160 years ago, social scientists turned to the medium to record and categorize criminals and the mentally ill for future reference and research (up until that time, graphic techniques such as engraving and lithography had been employed for such purposes). Photography was also used by colonists to “capture” the “exotic” individuals they encountered during their travels, not only to document their experiences but also to reinforce their belief in European superiority.

6. Wallis (note 4), p. 42.

7. Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs (New York, 1989), pp. 54–60; and Westerbeck essay, p. 8.