Manuel here taking the MLK holiday to discuss the cinematography category in terms of its aversion to honor black faces.

Young on the Selma set

Amidst all the outrage surrounding Selma’s near-shutout at the Academy Awards (nabbing only two nominations in Best Picture and Best Original Song), the focus has been on Ava DuVernay’s absence in the unsurprisingly male best director lineup and David Oyelowo’s absence in the unsurprisingly white best actor lineup. I want to focus today on Bradford Young’s absence in the best cinematography lineup. Had Young been nominated, he’d have been only the second African-American black D.P. [Ed. Note: thanks for correcting me on this crucial distinction, Ian & 3rtful] to be nominated for an Oscar (the first and only so far is Remi Adefarasin, nominated for his beautiful work on Elizabeth). Of course, this also reveals the systemic lack of diversity that TFE bestie Jessica Chastain brought up just last week at the Critic’s Choice Awards. Can you really focus on this type of statistic without addressing larger institutional issues? Not really. Or rather, not constructively. And so, rather than focus on this one snub which is already quite disappointing given Young’s rising profile, I wanted to know what it might tell us about the academy’s reticence to celebrate D.P.’s that lens black faces.

I’m never satisfied with the way I see my people photographed in movies. I think it comes from a lack of consciousness – if you grew up in a community where you don’t know black people, I wouldn’t suspect you would photograph them in a concerned way. - Young on the Politics of Lensing Black Films

The Academy, as it turns out, has been rather skittish about nominating directors of photography who have worked with the type of canvas Young so skillfully paints with in Selma. Indeed, several films with predominantly black casts have been on the hunt for a cinematography award before, sometimes coming quite close to landing that coveted distinction... 

12 Years a Slave (2013), Sean Bobbit BSC (ASC nominee, BAFTA nominee, BFCA nominee, Indie Spirit Award winner)
The Butler (2013), Andrew Dunn BSC
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Ben Richardson (Sundance Film Festival Cinematography Award winner, Indie Spirit Award winner)
The Help (2011), Stephen Goldblatt ASC, BSC
 

Precious (2009), Andrew Dunn BSC
American Gangster (2007), Harris Savides ASC (BAFTA nominee)
Dreamgirls (2006), Tobias A. Schliessler
Crash (2005), J. Michael Munro (BAFTA nominee)
Hustle & Flow (2005), Amy Vincent ASC (Sundance Film Festival Cinematography winner)
Ray (2004), Paweł Edelman (ASC nominee)
Hotel Rwanda (2004), Robert Fraisse
Ali (2001), Emmanuel Lubezki ASC, AMC

Beloved (1998), Tak Fujimoto ASC (Chicago Film Critics winner)
Malcolm X (1991), Ernest R. Dickerson ASC
Boyz n the Hood (1991), Charles Mills
Do The Right Thing (1989), Ernest R. Dickerson ASC (New York Film Critics Circle winner)

We could continue extending this list (let me know if I missed other high-profile films) should we want to not restrict ourselves to films that to some extent resonated with AMPAS elsewhere, but you get the idea: cinematographers, both famed and upcoming, have been left behind come nomination morning even when their films found success elsewhere, or even sadly, when they themselves had found so much traction in the industry run-up to the nominations.

You’ll also notice how both Sundance and the Indie Spirits seem more open to rewarding these films. Indeed the past five years alone, Sundance has singled out Young himself twice! In 2013 for Mother of George & Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and in 2011 for Pariah (featured in TFE's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series)

Nominations for Robert Richardson (Django Unchained, 2012), César Charlone (City of God, 2002), Janusz Kamiński (Amistad, 1997) and Allen Daviau (The Color Purple, 1985 - featured in TFE’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot series) remain fascinating exceptions to this rule. Even when the Academy has embraced African-American stories elsewhere, the cinematography category has remained elusive. Unless, apparently, you have Steven Spielberg or Harvey Weinstein in your corner. [Ed. Note: thanks to John T. for reminding me that Ed Zwick's Glory, starring Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington, won the Oscar for cinematography in 1989]

Where does this leave us, then?

While some might take this as more fodder with which to cry “racism!” at the Academy (which can be both necessary and exhausting, empowering and disheartening, see for example, #OscarsSoWhite), I think it should lead to a wider conversation about the way aesthetic valuation is necessarily implicated in cultural biases. Young has been quite articulate on this topic (as was, to a different extent, Steve McQueen on the circuit last year) and I’m curious as to whether thinking of “beautiful” images (a misleading, if sometimes disappointingly accurate way of describing what the cinematography award prizes) is anathema to black bodies and black faces for people who vote on this particular roster. Indeed, for a category that is usually so open to world-class films (take Ida and The Grandmaster’s inclusions these past two years), this statistical aberration strikes me as even more damning even if it can (and will probably) be chalked up to seemingly apolitical aesthetic choices: who could deny celebrating Lubezki’s long-takes in Birdman, Robert Yeoman’s diorama-like work in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s black-and-white off-center takes on Ida, Dick Pope’s painterly lighting in Mr. Turner or Roger Deakins’ exacting framing of Unbroken? Yet think of the iconic images left outside of this field just in this past decade: Solomon barely standing while being hung to a tree, Hushpuppy running with sparklers in her hands, Precious looking out of a window on a bus, Effie spotlit while breaking down on stage…