Love is the Message: Barkley Hendricks’s MFSB Portrait Aesthetics

Abstract

Abstract Barkley L. Hendricks’s (1945-2017) portraiture is considered in relation to camp’s liminal nature. Hendricks employs the camp techniques of surface emphasis, and affective audience engagement, to relay a political message of black agency. His portraiture is framed with dynamics of MFSB, a popular culture movement developed in his hometown, Philadelphia, during the era of the 1970s. The paper brings to light Hendricks’s participation within the complex histories of imaging the black body. His participation defies the hegemonies inherent within these histories and, at the same time, reifies them.