Some things I'm thinking about in my first month of graduate school
What a whirlwind this time has been. I started my program a month ago (almost to the day) and promised myself, at some point this summer, that I would try to write something (publicly) at least once a month. So, kudos to me for trying to hold to that at least during this first month of this six year journey.
This semester, I am in a seminar called, "In the Aftermaths and Afterlives of Ruin," which is broadly about "living in and through disastrous times." This week, we welcomed a guest speaker. Habiba Ibrahim is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her most recent book, Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life "posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with regard to the history of transatlantic slavery." In other words, Professor Ibrahim is considering how the experience of age is untimely or unnatural for people who are called black, and what the implications and possibilities of that are.
For me, one of the most resonant moments of exploration during her time with us and in her book, was about Devonte Hart. Professor Ibrahim opens her book with this reflection on Devonte:
Before his body became part of the ocean, a tearful black boy had his picture taken, and the image circulated throughout news outlets and social media. The now-famous photo, dubbed by the press as "The Hug Shared around the World," is of 12-year-old Devonte Hart tearfully hugging police officer Sgt. Bret Barnum during a protest rally in Portland, Oregon on November 25, 2014. The protest was part of a nationwide response to a grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. Among the protestors, Devonte had been holding a sign that read, "Free Hugs." In the photo, the boy is wearing a blue and white fedora and a caramel-colored leather jacket with cobalt blue cuffs. His right cheek is pressed against Barnum's chest; his face is contorted into a grimace as tears stream down. A blue-gloved hand clasps the back of Barnum's shoulder. Barnum, with the visor of his helmet disarmingly pushed up and his ungloved hands firmly wrapped around the boy's back, seems to be saying something soothing. The child's pained, tearful gaze looks off in the distance, not toward the viewer.
Ibrahim goes on to consider this photo as a moment to study black age, positing that Devonte shifts over and over in the white imagination: "Devonte is not a child, but an emblem of blackness as infantile, elderly, helpless, dutiful, and all of these. He is a figure of racial untimeliness, an embodied deflection away from the moment in history that was currently unfolding, and this racial untimeliness grants the photo its symbolic power" (45).
My attention remained with this photograph all week.
Looking at Devonte, the question that follows James Baldwin’s account of his Harlem boyhood ascends: “Whose little boy are you?” This question resonates in this chapter as one that asks how the black male child, and more broadly, how the black ungendered subject who lives in the afterlife as a malleable spectacle, might be reconnected to a history that accounts for black humanity. From the wayward paternalism that pimps in the slum who hasten the final days of childhood, as Baldwin recalls; to the foster care system from which Devonte was adopted; to various phases of the slave trade; to the ongoing expropriation and disposal of black lives, the question pertains to the abuses of disconnection, and the recovery of claiming and having claim. For a brief moment in time, a black boy was right here, right in front of us. How did we lose him? (50)
In the few days since our brief reflections on Devonte, I’ve found myself haunted by [remembering] his story: "Devonte's two white adoptive parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, routinely abused their black, adopted children. As we now know, Devonte and his five siblings were in the faily SUV when Jennifer Hart drove the vehicle off a cliff along the Northern California coast, into the Pacific Ocean. In a confounding act of bodily theft, three of Devonte's siblings were confirmed to be dead. As of this writing, Devonte's body has not been found" (49).
I've been haunted by the silences, as Professor Ibrahim termed them. By all of the things we do not know and cannot know. It’s led me to thinking more about the photos that we have worked with/considered/discussed during the seminar so far; the photos taken of two black boys. The first of Emmett Till. The second, Devonte Hart.
I’ve spent hours looking for more photos from that day, and from that encounter with Barnum. Presumably, because I have some compulsion to fill the gaps, the silence. Was he terrified? Was he coerced? What about his face, just before, and right after, this moment? Was there a sigh? An exhale? More tears? Were his siblings nearby?
The photographer of the “now-famous” picture, who is not black, seemed to experience the moment as something of a triumph, as hopeful, as full of possibility. On the other hand, there were black photographers that day who either refused to take Devonte’s photo at that moment, or who witnessed the tears that were streaming down his face, pre-hug, presumably (from their perspective) because he was scared to approach Barnum. One of these photographers wondered about coercion from his foster mom, and criticized what he saw as a staged performance, with this black boy as spectacle. I could find very little else in all of my scouring, which left Baldwin’s question hanging there like something of a refrain: “Whose little boy are you?”
Horrifying as the photograph of Emmett Till is, what we are offered, too, is the photo of Mamie Till-Mobley at her son’s casket. To me, it offers an answer to Baldwin’s question that we do not get for Devonte.
This is not to suggest a hierarchy of pain or despair between these two photographs, these lives, of course. But to consider both the gaps that are filled, and what is left wide open, through photographic work.
Ultimately, when reading these photographs, I am curious about the silences. What can’t we know? What do we know (or presume) from the photographs themselves, and from the narratives that have accompanied them? And what do we feel compelled to fill the unknowing with, if anything?
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As an aside, there is an episode of Atlanta, based on Devonte’s story, called “Three Slaps,” that aired in March of this year. The episode provides one answer to the question: “Whose little boy are you?”
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By way of update, after writing the first part, I did a slightly deeper dive and was able to find two of the photos and reflections from Alex Riedlinger, who is a black Portland-based photographer, and the person I referred to in my original post.
In the first photo, Riedlinger reflects that Devonte's guardian seemed to be "coaching him" through going up to Barnum, which, to me, is confirmed by the second photo. Wherein, she is squatting nearby to take more photos rather than offering support to Devonte who is clearly emotional.
The second thing that I found stunning about these photos, though, is that it appears to be right around, if not after, sunset. Would we ever think that from the original photo?
An interview with the photographer of the original photo indicates that he arrived to the protest around 3:30 pm. He recounts that he milled about – climbing walls to take photos of the masses, entering the crowd to get close ups. He eventually saw Devonte and felt drawn to follow him. Still, it was late November of 2014, and the sun set around 4:30 pm.
Again, the original, globally-circulated photograph:
What can we make of the choice to edit the photo so that it appears to be the middle of the day? What happens to the story if it's not edited in this way?
Highlighting Devonte and Barnum in the foreground would be one thing, but for the whole photo to look like it takes place at a completely different time of day does something else entirely.
