Representation in Relation to Race Exhibition

Wall angle documentation. Artists featured here: 1. Linathi Makanda, Imagining Home series. 2. Karabo Mooki, Dogg Pound Days series. 3. Trent Bozeman, A People Called Elaine (working title) series.

Imagining Home as a project challenges these limitations and depicts home as an intersection of people, spaces, and time. It re-imagines home as a person, a sentiment of nostalgia captured, and all these being places you can travel to. The photographer examines a place’s identity and its character as shaped by its happenings. Through these photographic works, we orbit the photographer’s definition of home and experience the poetry of a place, space, and the liminal being a grandfather, generational stagnancy or change, a childhood memory, a backyard, a Sunday afternoon, grief, electricity lines, a sunset. All these coming together to make us feel.

The focus of this photo-documentation is on the movement of Punk Rock culture in Soweto, South Africa. This is a visual scope into the unexpected growth of influential youth culture that has been rising from the infamous township of Soweto. Punk Rock and skateboarding is keeping the youth inspired and unafraid of pursuing their dreams, in an environment that is not receptive to “white music and white sports”, without public scrutiny or fear of being stereotyped. This movement is something that I have documented through the lives of the gatekeepers of the punk movement in Soweto. These unlikely role models from the band “T.C.I.Y.F” have influenced their community and outsiders, bridging borders through what many may deem as anti-establishment and non con-formative forms of self expression, similar to the rebellious nature of great South African artists such as, Brenda Fassie, Hugh Masekela and Lucky Dube, who rebelled against the Apartheid regime through their music. Debunking the stereotypes and the misconceived identity the world has shaped what it means to be Punk-Rock, and from its one-dimensional perception as an only white accessible genre.

There are people in this town who do not want to talk about it, rightly so. There are people in this town who have to talk about it. Yet, there are also people in this town who do not believe it occurred and call it fake news. The racial divide is as strong as ever in Elaine, creating a culture of silence and negligence. Community is everything for the black people who are living on the killing fields of their ancestors. Amidst COVID-19, children in Elaine were attending school in a town about an hour away twice a week. A majority of the children have never heard of the tragedy that occurred. Not only was this astonishing but it also made me realize the lack of education and history these kids have to deal with. They do not understand the levels of inequity in their lives such as why their mayor was never elected, why the north side of Main Street is riddled with potholes and debris, or why the memorial resides in Helena and not Elaine. My first visit last August was a lonely one until I found the basketball court. Kids of all ages shoot hoops and ride four-wheelers on loose gravel through the night. It really is the only place in the town where they can be themselves freely. Early into the project, I started to bring photographic monographs along to show them a better example of what I do. It was there first time seeing published photographs by black photographers and some were really interested, some not so much, but at some point, every kid stopped what they were doing and flipped through the pages. Throughout this past summer, I was fortunate to be able to host a photography camp with a select group of children at The Elaine Legacy Center. Giving these kids the tools and agency to represent themselves is empowering and can, hopefully, alter how this place exists to them. The town is currently constructing the Elaine Civil Rights Museum and I intend for the full body of work and the images made by the kids to solely exist there as an ever-evolving archive. This long-term project is an attempt to reaffirm the existence and humanity of black citizens in Elaine over time.

Wall angle documentation. Artists featured here: 1. Jewel Champbell, The Rhythm of Our Pride series. 2. Brandon Foushee, The Gray Area series. 3. Symone Knox, Withstand series.

Wall angle documentation. Artists featured here: 1. Jewel Champbell, The Rhythm of Our Pride series. 2. Brandon Foushee, The Gray Area series. 3. Symone Knox, Withstand series.

These photographs are a part of an ongoing photo series that I am currently working on. The inspiration behind this personal project is my HBCU’s culture. Before the pandemic, I noticed a disconnect between the student body and had the idea of documenting different aspects of Morgan State to uplift my community. Through photography, I can push my own narrative for my culture and institution. In the media, we rarely see coverage of every HBCU. By highlighting Morgan State’s culture, I am becoming more connected to the history.

Over the past two years, I have been grappling with understanding, acknowledging, and focusing on the ways in which black people historically have been surveilled. The inspiration for this project had stemmed from diving into understanding the dynamics of photo ethics through visual analysis. Writings from authors Simone Browne, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Beth Coleman, and Aria Dean had shaped my way of thinking about images. Their ideas about photography, image circulation and visual history had shown me that images truly hold power and thus in some capacity, my images hold power. As the politics of my body confuse you, I am rendered either hypervisible or invisible. The black visuality described confronts surveillance and combats it with the ideology of a sousveillance. Cadence is key. Spectacle is spectacle. And for this, questions of my relationship to this image box gives me permission to invite and reserve information. Black joy, black leisure, and black introspection can be read as radical. If they are read as radical, this work is not for you. Let me exist in the gray area. “Blackness, which is to say, black radicalism, is not the property of black people. All that we have (and are) is what we hold in our outstretched hands.” – Fred Moten “One of the greatest tasks of blackness as collective being has been to hold itself together in something like cohesion, to exhibit some legible character.” – Aria Dean “That was based upon the fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible.” – Ralph Ellison This work provides insight as to how I articulate myself in cohesion with blackness, the camera, and normalcy.

Withstand followed on the heels of the death of George Floyd; a time during which I was reflecting on history, the spectacle of Black death, the impact of “thugification” in media broadcasts, and a lack of positive representation in media. Interviewing and photographing against this backdrop, I began asking members of the Black community to evaluate the ways in which they have been affected by the images they have consumed. By collaborating on each individual image, Withstand pulls apart the impacts of iconography on our history and begins creating new narratives of everyday Blackness. Moreover, it contributes to a larger conversation that demands that our experiences be given space and validity.

Wall angle documentation. Artists featured here: 1. Kahdeem Prosper Joseph, Children’s Story series. 2. Nykelle Devivo, On Becoming series. 3. Joe Jennings, Love What’s Mine series.

For centuries the conditioning of colonialism reinforced the exclusion of the black experience from mainstream culture . A Children’s Story is rehabilitation through images with the use of mimesis and culture jamming. Kahdeem is exploring how replacing American icons with black bodies affects how black people see and value themselves. The glass which acts as a barrier between fantasy and reality, gives the images an abstract expressionist feel, skin tones are prominent but facial features are ambiguous to represent an archetype.

My practice is a personal meditation on the space between our world and that of spirit. Less interested in the destination, my photographs work to document the shift. The moments of time between moments of time, the pause between the clap. Raised in a deeply religious household and honoring the language of afro spiritualism my images reflect a lifetime of reverence for the divine while bearing the weight of our physical world. Now I find spirit in the collective hopes we place on a pair of sneakers, the way flowers reach for the sun, and the eyes of those I love. All can act as a portal to other worlds and as entrance for spirit unto ours. I photograph to bear witness of God as a reminder, as prayer, and as a reflection of self.

A little over years ago I started a body positivity project to help people who are self conscious about their body and also to show how all our bodies are different and still is just as beautiful as what our society has set for us to believe. I’ve photographed many people for this project, most have been people of color. For that reason is because we still don’t see enough art that represents black excellence in creative ways.