Alaina Morgan in Black Perspectives:
In 1963, famed American photographer Richard Avedon shot a set of rare portraits of Malcolm in which he appears unsmiling, facial features blurred, the rims of his iconic glasses just visible, and his eyes receding into the dark spaces around their sockets. He appears as a wisp – we know it is him, but only a faint impression of him is actually visible. Scholar Graeme Abernethy notes that the photograph is one of the few instances that we have which so starkly represents the malleability of Malcolm’s image. He writes that the photograph is “cryptic in its purposeful haze, skull-like in its coloration and concealment of Malcolm’s eyes in shadow, yet intimate in its perspective . . . [and therefore, it] seems to allude to the transubstantiation enabled by his death.” This malleability is possible because Malcolm’s life, with all of its possibility, was snuffed out as it began to shine the brightest.
More here.
(Note: Throughout February, at least one post will be devoted to Black History Month: A century of Black History Commemorations)
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