On cropping, choirs and colour composition

Do you remember the scandal about the erasure of the Black climate activist Vanessa Nakate? The young Ugandan woman was cropped out of the frame by Associated Press – allegedly to reduce background distraction – leaving us with the picture of a group of all white young climate activists around Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And of course, if the scandal hadn’t come to light, we would have simply assumed that climate activism is a white story and it would have left an imprint somewhere on our collective white psyche about the moral integrity of white activism.

I’ve been thinking about this when taking a break from work challenges by looking at wall paint: I’m keen to go as ecological and VOC-free as I can afford, and the intelligent algorithms pushed “Little Greene” my way who I resisted at first – the word ‘luxurious’ came up quickly and that doesn’t usually go well with a tight budget – but my resistance crumbled quickly. And they do have a fantastic range of colours. I wanted to know more about their credentials, though, and quite quickly stumbled on their background story including their heritage which they are very proud of because “Little Greene’s paints and wallpapers represent 300 years of decorative history” (according to the company’s website). They go on to tell the tale of a Joshua Rowlands who, in the 1770s, ran The Little Greene Dye Works and very close to the spot of today’s Little Greene factory. Here, Joshua Rowland “oversaw the supply of pigments and dyes to local weaving mills as the area” – on the outskirts of Manchester – “was central to the boom in the cotton trade during the Industrial Revolution” (same website). A little later they commend their own close collaboration with the National Trust and how the Trust’s “portfolio of over 350 historic houses” remains an incredible resource for finding and developing new paint colours. Of course it adds kudos and credibility to their repertoire – but I’m confused by what they chose to crop out of the frame. They completely erase Joshua Rowland’s connection with the enslavement of Black people – because without that there wouldn’t have been a boom in the cotton trade in a country that doesn’t have any chance of growing cotton. They also leave out the problematic heritage of the National Trust properties, many of them associated directly with the wealth from the transatlantic slave trade which is, I imagine, also a distracting background to selling luxury paints.

I don’t begrudge them their artistic direction and portfolio, and I really appreciate their dedication to quality, heritage and ecology. I also understand that Little Green cannot undo history – but by cropping it out of the frame altogether, their paints and references leave us with the imprint somewhere on our collective white psyche of white industriousness and a well deserved bit of white luxury.

From Little Greene I draw a slightly jagged line, about 40 miles NNW and land at Salts Mill in Saltaire for another break from my work challenge: I’m fascinated with the textile history around where I live and love movies that are filmed on local sights – so I watch “The Choral” which was largely shot in and around Saltaire. If you like choral music (I do), then it’s a really beautiful watch and the cinematography doesn’t disappoint. But I am disappointed by everything that’s cropped out and erased – and I’m not even talking about the misery of life and mill work during WWI. I’m disappointed by yet another story that centres the lives, agency and neediness of white men. The only – admittedly major – Black character is a young woman who is permanently in Salvation Army uniform and cast into the role of nurse and angel for the music piece they rehears; the young white man who fancies her tries to persuade her very eagerly to sleep with him the night before he has to board the train to the trenches in France. But her shyness bordering on coy isn’t portrayed as positive female propriety but as unnecessary prudishness and hardness in the face of his destiny.

There are fleeting moments during the movie of seeing a Black solider somewhere in the background and possibly some other racialised characters, but they don’t even get to face us, leave alone have a voice. White women are more visible throughout but in very inferior roles: the white women that play a larger role include a fickle young mill girl who abandons her lover while he fights in the trenches in order to run into the arms of a younger man who’s yet too young for conscription – when her lover returns home, bruised and injured from serving his country, she is seemingly embarrassed but stays with her new love with his generous blessings. Not, though, without agreeing to sexually service him when he’s at a very low point. The other prominent women include the town whore who services half the choir’s patrons and who we feel slightly sorry for; and the Alderman’s wife who is in mourning over the loss of their son in the trenches and barely breaks her silence – but it’s clear that her grief is seen as exaggerated and placing an extra burden on her husband who is one of the whore’s clients.

I watched this with increasing frustration –the way the women in this movie either exist as silenced by grief or in sexual service even though otherwise not really respectable. And the Black Salvation Army sister is characterised exactly in the way my partner is currently helping me to see: he studies for a masters in Black Liberation Theology and is reading some seminal womanist theology texts which he generously shares with me. And he helped me to see how historically the role of Black women was always cast as that of being the strong one who supports, nurtures and looks after the needs of everyone else. And watching this movie, I can see clearly that this framing clearly hasn’t changed: all complexity of emotion is cropped out, and her inability or resistance to sexually service and nurture the young soldier is a mark on her character. In the final scene we get to see her at the train platform watching his train slowly disappear into the sepia coloured distance of the war while the recognition of having let him down is etched into her sad face, beneath the Salvation Army bonnet. And this leaves a sepia coloured imprint somewhere on our collective white psyche about the danger of Black women’s resistance and crops out the possibility of women solidarity.