The Evocation of Death
in Dorothy Dandridge’s Photograph:
The Reading of a Still
Dorothy Dandridge was problematized because of her race, sexuality,
and the politics of a hegemony that rendered African American women screen
stars unable to escape being racialized and sexualized. Yet Dandridge became one
of the most commercially photographed African American women in post World
War II America. Because of the star status she achieved in the cinema world,
Dandridge became a marketable commodity, and her stardom subsequently
translated into a commodity that was exploited, reproduced and marketed to the
public for mass consumption. Dandridge was commodified by white Hollywood;
she posed for still photographs that attempted to capture her as she was and is still
remembered, but who, according to Christian Metz, ‘'no longer is” (83). As one
critic described photography, “By drawing attention to the moment of creation,
that is literally freezing the subject in time and place, photography does not simply
reproduce the real but validates the impression of reality — the photographic image
appears truthful” (Benzel 3). Thus it was for Dandridge, rendered an object of the
gaze by white Hollywood because of her racial and sexual construction, as her
body became a site by which white males could explore their own fantasies. Not
only does Dandridge’s photograph reproduce the real as she elicited the male gaze;
it similarly captivates how she internalized the gaze by projecting this gaze onto
herself — a self so consumed by the continual exploitation of her racial and sexual
construction that she became suicidal. It is well understood that death is not
inseparable from photography; Metz contends that the very nature of photography
signifies death as it captures a single moment in time that has passed and can no
longer be retrieved (83-4). I suggest that this photograph of Dandridge was indeed
symbolic of death — not just of any death but of Dandridge’s own death.
The Dandridge photograph 1have chosen is one that 1managed to acquire
in Los Angeles at one of the many enterprises specializing in movie stills, posters,
and other collectibles. This photograph, although reproduced elsewhere, has never
been critically read (“Island in the Sun,” 32). The photographer and the year in
which the photograph was produced remain anonymous. Dandridge, however, is
totally stripped of anonymity and the mature visage that she reveals certainly dates
the photograph to late in her career, when she had achieved some degree of acclaim
and success as a screen actress. The way she is positioned within the frame, in
addition to the contrivance of her pose, combine to make it a promotional photograph