When you roll the old Sanyo reel-to-reel
recorder you hear her crackly, but flat un-
emotive voice outlining the position of her
people on having their images stolen when
photographed for anthropological purposes …
‘We split / the way you see us’
‘we split’/ your portraits of black faces’
‘we split’ / you pinning us to race an’
not language, law, culture, country’
‘why not you show black bodies in chains?’
‘black heads split? black heads chopped off
an’ sent to museums ‘round the world?’
‘we split those photographs of black heads’
‘we put white space between two halves
of those black heads in photos you take’
‘we spilt your gaze so you don’t know where
to look when you see black faces split in two’
‘all those black photos in books and museum
we send their gaze back to your white eyes’
‘each black face you see now splits your gaze …
do you see black faces have new power?’
‘do you see the real – do you see you too?’