A Photo Album's Redrawn Color Line: On Black Freedom in Japan, 1947–1949

Abstract

Abstract While art historians have highlighted the reputed freedoms afforded to African Americans—such as painters and sculptors—who traveled abroad to escape racism in the United States, little attention has been paid to vernacular photography or to places beyond a few storied locations. Made partly within the context of the American military base of Camp Gifu, an album by a woman named Darlene Littleton brings attention to the vernacular photographs of Black life in Japan under the US Occupation following World War II. The album serves as a creative practice in which Black visual production is propelled by a range of circumstances distinctly marked by alternate modes of freedom—moments loosened from the logic of race, gender, and class commonly known to the United States.