Annie Paul posts a video and pictures taken by Jamaican photographer Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid. In the video, Reid talks about his "A Picture called Death," which he shot in the early morning of a dance that had gone horribly wrong.
Peter Sam comments on the video...
We seeing that everyday; that’s not new. It aint new it is as old as the famine in Africa or tribal war in Nigeria. Our photo shoots always have desolation and dust, bare foot and white mouth, death in the ghetto or the hood. We story nice if we kill each other, it nice when we belly big like a blimp and we foot look like Gaulin own.
I see the circulation of this shoot as a way of encouraging black film makers to look at all the dutty, stinking things that are among us. It will see a new rush to make documentaries about murder and poverty; that will be our signature.
We called ourselves nigger and dawg in such a way that it became fashionable to say it, then when a white man said it then we stopped to realise how much mud we ourselves had placed out there. I will not support any more documentaries that only show the negatives about our behaviour. I am not going to be stupid and say it is not there; I am just not going to write about it or lend support for it.
Why is talent respected from black people when we talk about the violence we inflict on each other? Is that all we can showcase? It reminds me of years ago when all our films were based on dire poverty and injustice. You always saw a woman in old cast off dress and she worked in Massa house. Now how different it is? A killing? Blackman killing Blackman? He is now becoming something of a star, all the attention, what about some lil black boy who invent something or did well at Harvard?
There must be a time when I want to see a black man (meaning African) doing something other than playing basketball or in a gang. We need more films depicting us in NASA and in the labs finding cures for some of the very ailments that affect African people.
