The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Womanhood

Winner of the African Photobook of the Year Award

A Choice Outstanding Title of the Year
A USA Today Must-Read for Black History Month
An NPR Goats and Soda Editors’ Pick
A BookRiot Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year

An unprecedented visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs--featuring an Introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson.

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological--bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty--＂poverty porn.＂ But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870-1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans--most starkly, striking nudes--revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It’s a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways--even if it’s only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

Catherine E. McKinley is a curator, costume historian, and writer whose books include Indigo, a journey along the ancient indigo trade routes in West Africa, and The Book of Sarahs, a memoir about growing up black and Jewish in the 1960s-80s. She taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. ＂Aunty! African Women in the Frame, 1870 to the Present,＂ featuring selections from the McKinley collection, debuted in Brooklyn in 2018. She lives in New York City.