In Response: A Reflexive Critique, 2025

In Uwe Ommer’s 1986 Black Ladies, he travels across Africa photographing women because of the aesthetic quality of their skin, exoticizing them through the nude. In response I began dissecting Ommer’s use of soft lighting and contrast that reinforces his narrative—highlighting how photography constructs containers of meaning. In this iteration, I question what it means to “create” while relinquishing control. Stemming from his work, I consider the Black body not as figuration but as an energetic medium that oscillates in and out of the camera’s aperture. The term “Black Body” is a racial construct thus, I stretch the connotations of surface and collective memory to engage how one exists in multiplicity.