Afrocentric beauty has historically been overlooked as mainstream media and art forms chose to favor a Eurocentric standard of beauty. In his new photo essay book “Black Woman As Muse,” Charlotte photographer Jerry Taliaferro attempts to refute that norm with a series of more than 100 black-and-white photographs that explore the diverse physical and spiritual beauty of Black women.
Taliaferro, 73, said he was long intrigued by how well Hollywood stars of the 20s and 30s — women like Greta Garbo — were photographed and lit. “I wondered, what if we shot African American women that way?” he said.
Taliaferro noted that despite a few fair-skinned outliers, such as Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, darker-complexioned women like Hattie McDaniel (the first Black person to win an Academy Award) weren’t photographed in the same way, “and they were just as beautiful as Garbo.”
And that’s what Taliaferro said he set out to achieve in “Black Woman As Muse,” in which he pushes viewers to be curious and look beyond what meets the eye. “The pictures had to say more than, ‘Hi, I’m a beautiful African American woman.’ I wanted pictures that said something powerful and inspires you,” he said…