The initial examination of this picture from Huie you can see that an African American man is in a barber shop. He is getting his hair cut by another African American man who is also an African American. You can tell this because it looks like that man that is sitting down is wearing a smock while the other man looks like he could be holding hair clippers and trimming the mans hair.
There is a stereotype that African Americans in general take their hair very seriously and can spend a lot of time at the barber shop or hair salon. Knowing this and looking deeper at the picture deeper I believe Huie took this picture intending to try and represent the community within a barber shop between the barbers and their clients that is often seen within African American barber shops or hair salons. Although I think similar communities exist within all barber shops and hair salons it is commonly believed that it is a very strong community within African American barber shops and hair salons. I think Huie is trying to show this community feel in a positive light through this photo by showing the client as comfortable and the barber being focused and caring about his client because he is a member of their strong knit community.
I believe that both Atwood and Huie both use the concept of "othering" in their work. "Othoring" being defined as the portrayal of a group as different. Huie does this by representing different groups in the positive light. In this picture representing African Americans in their barber shops or hair salons and how they spend a lot of time and money within them. Atwood does it differently with The Handmaids's Tale than Huie does in his photographs. Atwood does it by creating different social classes within a dystopian style story. One specific social class being the handmaid's. Handmaid's within the story have many limitation that make them different from others within society. Handmaid's are the fertile women of society that are used to grow the population. Handmaid's have limitations on common things like not being able to read or write, being forced to live in seclusion, and more. This shows how Atwood and Huie both use "othering" in their work but in very different ways.
Matthew-
ReplyDeleteGreat photo choice! I appreciated that you treated each part of the prompt equally.
Be sure to:
- Think about the author/artist's format, structure, color, etc. when thinking about connotation
- Watch out for generalizations or assumptions- your denotative analysis relies heavily on them and doesn't provide much examination beyond them.
- Provide textual evidence to support your connection of other in THT