André Ramos-Woodard Remixes Black Cartoon History in Bold Portraits

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Combining original portraits with cartoons from American history, photographer André Ramos-Woodard is redrawing the future to tell a black and queer story that’s distinctly his own.nh

ANDRÉ RAMOS-WOODARD: I’m a trained photographer, but I’ve always liked drawing. When I was a kid, I would watch anime with my cousin and redraw all the characters from Dragon Ball Z as Black people.

Years later, I looked into the history of illustration, and that’s when I found all these minstrel caricatures that I used in Black Snafu. It was 2020, after the death of George Floyd and many other Black people, and it felt really important for me to dig into that.

I was making photographs that I considered celebratory, highlighting Black experiences, then drawing on top of the images to juxtapose the truth of Black people versus the way Black people have been portrayed throughout American cartooning. It’s a little bit of an act of reclamation, using these characters to teach about American history.

But honestly, it got kind of tiring. Stealing these characters, which I would consider detrimental to Black identity, was exhausting. So, I started to incorporate characters from my childhood, like Spawn or Sticky and Fifteen Cent from The Proud Family, that are pro-Black and just powerful, fun, courageous, and celebratory.

Even though I’m using references in my work, I try to fight against the idea that you have to have a historical background to really dig into art. My homies, my friends, my family, I want them to see themselves in these characters. I want them to find something that they relate to.

Follow André Ramos-Woodard on Instagram.

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