For so long it was like we didn't exist
For so long it was like we didn’t exist, uses found photographs purchased from ebay.com. These photographs depict Black vernacular life, and all sourced from one family’s archive of images. The archive came from a small town in Illinois. This work considers the crucial role of amateur photography in Black families Post-World War II era. The advent of affordable consumer cameras in the 1950s &1960s allowed for Black folks to capture intimate moments of the everyday. In Gullah-Geechee a word used to describe the ordinary or the everyday is drylongso. These moments serve as direct counternarratives to the racist ideologies and stereotypes that permeated depictions of Black life and family, which were commonly disseminated through popular media (photography, films, animations, music), as they still are to this day.
In these photographs, Black folks are simply living and being. Nothing more nothing less. Family gatherings. Smiles. Slapping fives. Enjoying a cigarette. Embracing a partner. Posing or being caught off -guard by the camera. These photographs illustrate the multifaceted experiences of Black folks in the US. My work is organizing and placemaking for these images.
Placing the images on the walls of Kinfolk House, re-energizes their memory, even if the family is unable to see them, they still radiate love, intimacy, care belonging. This is a site-specific installation, meaning that Kinfolk House is the only space these images would be placed. I would not install these images in an art museum, as an art museum would not carry the meaning and purpose in the same way Kinfolk House or another familial space would. These images are visual manifestations of poems. They are organized in groups of 5 to 7 images spread across the wall, using the Japanese poetry form of Haiku as an aesthetic structuring method.
