On Being A Triple Threat: Black, Male, & Gay

In Our Own Image: The Art of Black Male Photography, edited by Vega (Vega Press, 88 pp.)

In Our Own Image is a coffee table book that looks at the black male through the lenses of seven black male photographers from the United States and England. The 90-plus black-and-white photos present these models in various poses and states of undress. These well shot photos are several notches above the pornographic, stereotypical images offered to consumers of Sierra Domino and other black male nude photography series: there are no shots of genitalia or explicit sex.

Nevertheless, the photos do not, as poet Carl Cook states in the beefcake book's forward, reveal any of the qualities he believes are inherent in black males: "physical presence, grace, beauty, inner psyche, and spiritual persona." In fact, if straight people were to browse through the book, the nudity (which takes up most of the book), would reinforce their notion that gay men are sex-obsessed. It would have been better if the photographers had broadened their perspective and given us photo-essays that truly showed black men in most, if not all, of their eye-catching, exhilarating  diversity--especially since this book's homoerotic images are specifically aimed at a gay audience.

In Our Own Image's editor, Vega, could have used poet/novelist Langston Hughes and photographer Roy DeCarava's 1955 book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life as a model. In that book, Hughes's words, along with DeCarava's photos of actual people, formed what has been called a "fiction-document" that tells the story of one Harlem family. Through such a forum, In Our Own Image would have been much more effective in telling potential buyers what it means to be a triple threat in this world: black, male, and gay.

This review was originally published in the Lambda Book Report (May/June 1993).