© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive' (detail),1993–96, 78 gelatin silver prints and 4 chromogenic prints, dimensions variable, Eileen Harris Norton Collection © Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text

When we look at our family albums and our archives, we think back to past events, interpret them, and remember how we were, as perhaps we would not have wanted to be, we see the relationships with our loved ones or our friends being reproduced in the immediacy of a snapshot.

As the authors of Photographies de familles contemporaines: Perspectives croisées entre sociologie et psychanalyse (1) argue, family archives do not necessarily say something but make those who observe them speak. Therefore, what would happen if you find yourself looking at the story in pictures of a woman, an archive running throughout her entire life, and discover that this album is a fictional story? Reading the image, in this case, would shake the attention. If indeed the pictures find their junction of interest in reproducing facts that happened, reading and interpreting images resulting from a staging places the viewer in a different perspective, at times ambiguous. Why did the author of these photographs put the subject in this position? What does it mean to invent a story from scratch and represent it in images?

© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text 

An emblematic example of this "archive reconstruction" is The Fae Richard's Photo Archive. In this photographic project, published in book form, the two authors, Zoe Leonard and Cheryl Dunye have built the story of Fae Richards, an African-American actress, and singer. The staged photos used as documentation for the film "The Watermelon Woman" (1996) are presented here as an intimate photo album.

© Leonard Zoe, Dunye Cherly: 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive' (Hardback), Artspace Books, 1997

© Leonard Zoe, Dunye Cherly: 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive' (Hardback), Artspace Books, 1997 

© Leonard Zoe, Dunye Cherly: 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive' (Hardback), Artspace Books, 1997

In the pictures, we see her life passing over a time ranging from the 20s to the 70s of the last century. In particular, we observe the film sets, the theatrical stages that see her involved as an actress, or the photographic sets in which she poses like a diva; as much as meetings, relationships, and friendships. Looking at these photographs, many themes can reach the viewer. Still, one in particular, which makes this work extremely contemporary, is the centrality of the black artist, her being the protagonist of the scene.

The book is intimately linked to the film The Watermelon Woman (from 1996), directed by Dunye, who also has the starring role. History speaks to us of a woman, Cheryl, who works in a video store and is planning to write one script for a feature film about the stereotypical roles of black women in the 1930s and 1940s in Hollywood. The research leads her to identify a woman in the credits always called "The watermelon woman," who turns out to be a singer who often frequents the lesbian clubs of Philadelphia. The film's protagonist discovers that this woman is named Fae Richards, thanks to further research.

© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text

Here, therefore, comes to life the project, parallel to the production of the film The Watermelon Woman, to reconstruct the archive of this woman, who, from hidden and forgotten, becomes the protagonist of her story. Therefore, the book is the product of a reflection poised between truth and fiction, between autobiography and fictitious reconstruction. The cover reproduces the features of a typewritten notebook, while the photographs go with captions written with the typewriter.

The shots are very reminiscent of those of another artist, James Van Der Zee, a black Renaissance photographer from Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. On the other hand, the themes that these images present cross issues of gender, class, and race with extreme clarity. Fae is an actress, so she has the opportunity to perform the hectic game of roles in which irony and joke allow her to go beyond the boundaries of the licit (historically connoted) and to interpret her infinite identities with unexpected freedom for the epochs represented. 

© James Van Der Zee, Beautiful Bride, c. 1930, gelatin silver print, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

In some pictures, Fae plays the maid of the southern plantations. In other images, she dances as Josephine Baker, to remind the audience of their colonial gaze and the pride of the dancer that took the role of the protagonist of her shows. Fae also jokes with her friends in a game of bodily allusions that reveals her sexual identity. Also relevant is the image on page 45: Fae meets members of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), where her role as a militant and a public figure is emphasized. 

© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text

© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text

Memory thus becomes a political act of affirmation, of resistance to that secondary role usually designated to women in archives, even family ones (2). Instead, a leading role is opposed, in which she becomes the foremost and fluid interpreter of her thousand roles as a woman, lover, diva, activist, and everyday person.

This text is a result of the 90s, a historical period in which gay and lesbian activism raised awareness through campaigns relating to the plague of AIDS. Zoe Leonard herself was, in fact, an active member of the ACT UP association. In conclusion, we could therefore define this photographic project as a choral story, which has crossed and still crosses various issues: from intersectional feminism, LGBTQ rights, and class differences to racism. This “a posteriori” photographic archive makes people talk about themselves and makes the viewer think and immerse in a story that is also the B-side of another story in images (The Watermelon Woman): a surprising matryoshkas game.

(1) Veuillet-Combier Claudine, Gratton Emmauel (2021), Photographies de familles contemporaines: Perspectives croisées entre sociologie et psychanalyse, PU. 

(2) Cfr. Bourdieu Pierre (1972), La fotografia: usi e funzioni sociali di un’arte media, Guaraldi. 

© Zoe Leonard, 'The Fae Richards Photo Archive', 1993-1996, detail. Created for Cheryl Dunye’s film, ‘Watermelon Woman’ (1996). 78 Black and white and 4 color photographs and notebook of typed text

Zoe Leonard (Whitney Museum of American Art) 
The Fae Richards Photo Archive: A Panel with Garrett Bradley, Huey Copeland, Lanka Tattersall, and Rebecca Matalon