The Black Woman in Caribbean Photography: Intersectional Narratives between Race and Gender

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of the representation of Black women in the Caribbean photographic universe, establishing two significant moments: the foundation of the figure of the “Black woman” as a sign in nineteenth-century photography and the shift in paradigm in the work of contemporary Caribbean artists, with an emphasis on the photographic works of Renée Cox, from Jamaica, and María Magdalena Campos and Susana Pilar Delahante, both from Cuba. Some arguments from decolonial feminism, in the voice of María Lugones, are taken as theoretical sources, with an emphasis on the intersectionality between race and gender as an interpretative key to assess the evolution of the sign “Black woman” in Caribbean photography.