Creating the Image, Examining the Self: Unveiling the Cultural Consciousness of One African American Girl

• In Event: Race, Social Class, and Social Justice

Abstract

There are many ideas about the representation of adolescents, particularly in visual and media contexts. With youth, media representations are often problematized within a single narrative based upon socio-cultural notions of race, gender, and sexuality. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one African American girl perceives her self in relation to her socially constructed identity and standards of culture, bodily aesthetics, and spiritual ways of being. This paper contends that African American adolescent girls can apply photographically constructed life notes to think about their identities. The authors argue that through the production of self-directed digital photography, girls of color can become more conscious owners and producers of their adolescent epistemologies and socially constructed identities.

Authors

• Karla R Manning, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Philip Jay Bostic, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Adrienne Duke