THE PHOTOGRAPHER SHOWING THE WORLD THAT BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL

Peek behind the scenes at a fashion shoot, and there’s a high probability you will see a man wielding the camera. It’s been this way for a long, long time — at least 50 years, since the seminal 1966 film Blow-Up cemented the image of the fashion photographer as a sexy, omniscient white male. Surely, had the stylish Michelangelo Antonioni movie, starring David Hemmings as the photographer, cast a woman in the lead role, it would’ve been framed as a fantasy flick.

Today there’s more diversity among fashion photographers, and yet progress has been so meager that it’s still jolting to see Itaysha Jordan, who’s both female and African-American, controlling the lens. Jordan’s photographed for Lancôme and Iman Cosmetics, Marie Claireand Essence magazines, and her most recent project is a series for P&G’s celebrated My Black Is Beautiful campaign.

“People see my work and they think it’s by a man,” Jordan tells OZY, having just returned from Utah and Canada, where she photographed a group of Olympians for a client. “It happens to me all the time. Just recently a designer said she was showing my photos to a friend in the business, and he said, ‘Oh, these were shot by a woman? She shoots like a man.’ It’s supposed to be a compliment,” Jordan says dryly.

Growing up in Boston, Jordan recalls being surrounded by “Polaroid instant cameras, my parents’ textbooks about art and my dad’s record collection.” Art and music were early influences that the Brooklyn resident still infuses into her work, but her interests took a different direction from the start. “I remember being opinionated about how I dressed and wore my hair from a very young age,” she says. Jordan and her best friend began collecting fashion magazines, and, in high school, she found a mentor in David Pritki, a teacher who introduced her to photography and gave her access to a darkroom.

Today, Jordan is proud to share the spotlight with a burst of talented women photographers, including Cass Bird, Petra Collins and Emma Summerton, who are gaining ground in the industry, but the upper ranks of fashion photography remain as homogenized as a gallon of milk. No one I spoke with, including Jordan herself, who is 40 and holds a degree in visual arts, could name another Black female fashion photographer. In fact, they were hard-pressed …

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