Photography and Stereotypes

Photography has in the past and in this day been adapted as a probing tool, it is as a much a 
medium of witnessing as it is an analytical one. In this series of images my concept was to look at 
the stereotypes that ‘we’ have placed on people to an extent that one can see a face and paste 
a personality, an identity just from how we perceive faces. As Alfred Einstein says “We are only 
beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting 
moments, anyone of which might say something significant.” 

In this series I photographed a number of people who at first glance I saw and thought I knew the 
kind of people they are only from what I perceived in my mind but only after I talked to them I 
realized they were more than just faces but they had more to offer that what I initially thought. 

The images are two layers of two different people one being the perception I had and the other being the actual identity that they carried. This I found problematic to place stereotypes to faces before getting to know who the actual person is. The darkness in the series is the aura that I feel stereotypes place on our identity as a people of Zimbabwe. The spot light is to emphasize the weight that we have placed on faces to determine who a person is. I found this would explain possibilities in the sense that in epimistic possibilities (possibilities that come through knowledge e.g. tomorrow is Friday the possibility that tomorrow is Friday factual). What is the possibility that we have created an identity of how we perceive people from the stereotypes and ideologies we have over and over placed on people’s faces? I find it highly problematic though it is still within our power to recreate a new perception and the possibilities are infinite.

About the Author/Photographer

Nyaradzo “Nyary” Dhliwayo was born in Marondera, Zimbabwe on the 24th of October 1991. Her name Nyaradzo is a Shona name that means comfort. She tries  to portray the meaning of her name in her work and have her name as her identity as it carries a meaning that she feels obliges her to be the voice of her society and become a comforter through the emotion and imagery of her work. Nyary has had art, especially photography, as her release point as long as she can remember. It has given her a chance to escape into worlds she created for herself; with the subjects becaming her confidants, the compositions of her music. Her main interests lie in the themes of identity and representation of the body especially the female body and the stereotypes that come along.