Abstract :
We have something in photography that is called a zone system % the zone system
is completely constructed around what makes white people look best. It is our system
and our theory – photo theory – for understanding what a good print is, and it is
based on white skin. So the very base of photography and the way that photography
has been developed in the West as a science, because that’s what most of it is, is
based on ideas of whiteness. What would have happened, for instance, if
photography, had been developed in Japan? The images would look very different,
and what is theoretically impossible or even practically acceptable would be very,
very different as well. [Carrie Mae Weems in conversation with bell hooks, Art on
my Mind. pp. 91–92]
We face as a nation the deep, profoundly perturbed and perturbing question of our
relationship to others – other cultures, states, histories, experiences, traditions,
peoples, destinies. There is no Archimedian point beyond the question from which to
answer it; there is no advantage outside the actuality of relationships among
cultures, among us and others; no one has the epistemological privilege of somehow
judging, evaluating, and interpreting the world free from the encumbering interests
and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves. [Ibid. p. 65]
