Shine, Shimmer, and Splendor: African Diasporic Aesthetics and the Art of Being Seen in the Bahamas

This chapter examines a popular local practice in the Bahamas in which performing for the camera is central: proms. Here, young people stage elaborate entrances projected onto screens within the prom venue. Young people, influenced by hip-hop and dancehall culture, perform their own visibility in these entrances through the effect of light, flash, generated through photography. One famed prom entrance dating from 2004 featured a young woman who orchestrated faux paparazzi to line the red carpet for the event. She did not hire the photographers to produce photographs (and in fact she did not retain a single photograph of the entrance), but instead to highlight her own visibility and representability. Such prom practices draw on and reconfigure other diasporic cultures, global manifestations of hip-hop, local masquerade traditions, and global spectacles of celebrity.