The Week Ahead | Film

A Kaleidoscope of Racial Imagery

‘Through a Lens Darkly’ Captures Black History

The phrase “so wrong in so many ways” could easily have been invented to describe the picture that flits by about four minutes into “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.” It’s a print advertisement from the 1940s that shows a smiling black boy with a big slice of watermelon, under the headline, “It’s sweeter because of petroleum.” The copy below, promoting Shell, suggests that buying gas makes the earth more bountiful. Racial stereotyping and petrochemical addiction, advanced in a single image.

“Through a Lens Darkly,” a documentary by Thomas Allen Harris that opens on Wednesday at Film Forum, explores not only how black people have been portrayed in images since the invention of photography, but also how black photographers have seen and captured the world. Cringe-worthy vintage ads are only one subject. Another, with added resonance because of events in Ferguson, Mo., is the photographic portrayal of violence against blacks, in the South and elsewhere. (209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village; 212-727-8110,