Pam 2, 2021

Raf Urban  

Portrait of Pam Garnier, American actress who would quickly become an African-American icon thanks to her role as a strong and vengeful woman in the cinema in the 1970s.

Her father being a mechanic for the US Air Force, Pam Grier's family lived on various military bases in Europe before returning to the United States, in Denver, when Pam was 14 years old. Destined to study medicine, the studious Pam Grier studied at the Metropolitan State College then participated in Miss competitions to finance her studies. It is from there that everything changes; a Hollywood agent, Dave Baumgarten, spots her. Pam Grier then left for Hollywood where she took drama lessons while working as a switchboard operator at AIP (American International Pictures).

In 1970, thanks to her advantageous appearance, she obtained her first film role in a film by Russ Meyer: Hollywood Vixens. Roger Corman noticed her and made her the muse of a sub-genre that came out of oblivion, prison films for women. Grier thus filmed Women in Cages in 1971 or The Big Doll House the same year. However, the actress is launched three years later with Coffy, the black panther of Harlem. Pam then becomes the star of the Blaxploitation and shows off her physique in a series of films produced by the AIP, Foxy Brown. This role of strong and vengeful woman makes Pam Grier an African-American icon. Note that the actress does her own stunts for these films. These roles illustrate the strong, free, independent and courageous African-American woman and contribute to changing the image of blacks in the cinema, often confined to roles of cowardly underlings: “I did not think that these films would become the object of a cult twenty-five years after their release and that they would represent as much for the black community. I didn't invent anything. My mother and my grandmother, who have fought all their lives against discrimination, are more deserving than me”, affirms humbly Pam Grier.

Work produced on canvas exclusively in our gallery by RAF URBAN, thanks to a unique technique of stencils and a superposition of colors.