Young, Black and female: transformative moments – in pictures
A new exhibition centres itself around Black girlhood and features work by photographers and film artists ranging from eight to 94 years old who have explored the theme in a sustained way
Main image: Get feathered … Scheherazade Tillet’s Queen of the Band Juniors Competition from Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of PossibilityWed 4 May 2022 02.00 EDT
Kahran Bethencourt – Sophisticated Soul, 2017
Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility is an urgent response to the crisis of racism and heterosexism that Black girls continue to face, as well as a radical reimagining of our world through their gazes and those of the adults that were once them. Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility is at Express Newark, New Jersey until 2 July Share on Facebook Share on TwitterTawny Chatmon – It Was Never Your Burden to Carry, 2020
Black girls are our most innovative cultural producers, community connectors and trendsetters, but their contributions are rarely recognised and their lives are largely invisible in our dominant culture Share on Facebook Share on TwitterLisa Majiq Farrar – Medina Descendants, 2021
In contrast, this exhibition considers Black girlhood as an essential stage of development, an integral moment of political awakening, an embattled site of representation, and a critical source of artistic inspiration throughout the globe Share on Facebook Share on TwitterScheherazade Tillet – Queen of the Band, Juniors Competition, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 2020
Tillet’s photographs depict a variety of important moments in Black girls’ lives, ranging from private play in the home to the pomp and circumstance of prom preparations to parading down the streets of Port of Spain, Trinidad, during the Kiddies’ Carnival. Her work captures an air of rarely seen intimacy and comfort. She is as much a caregiver and relationship-builder as she is a photographer, and the relationships she develops with her collaborator/subjects resonate throughout each piece Share on Facebook Share on TwitterCarrie Mae Weems – Woman and Daughter with Make Up, 1990
These Black women, girls, and genderqueer artists create images that actively resist the traditional white male gaze that has long dominated photography and film Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBrooklyn Starks – Self-Portrait, 2019
Co-curator Scheherazade Tillet writes: ‘We are doing a Black girl takeover of Express Newark, The city of Newark, and photography. We are disrupting traditional art-world hierarchies by centring Black girls as subjects, artists, and agents of their own lives’ Share on Facebook Share on TwitterStevia Ndoe – Sister, Sister, 2018
Unlike conventional hierarchies between a photographer and his subject, the artists here embrace the intimacy and unusual access they have with their muses who, more often than not, are their daughters, best friends, sisters, mentees, collaborators, or even themselves Share on Facebook Share on TwitterNydia Blas – Resana With Mirror, 2016
The results are unabashedly honest, with intimate images that enable the viewer to bear witness to the complex rituals and relationships that constitute Black girlhood Share on Facebook Share on TwitterDeborah Jack – Looking Out, 2016
‘Our show is in direct contrast to a history of photography and film in which Black girls have routinely been oversexualised or adultified,’ says co-curator Zoraida Lopez-Diago. ‘As a result, they have become more invisible and vulnerable to violence in our society’ Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSeneca Steplight-Tillet – Make Up Time , 2021
The images are grounded in the Black feminist ethics of care, collaboration, and access Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSophia Nahli Allison – A Love Song for Latasha, 2019
The exhibition is recognised throughout as a fundamental right of passage and liberating process for these artists, and for the curators, Tillet and Lopez-Diago themselves, who have chosen to include each other’s works while candidly acknowledging that Black girlhood was, and continues to be, foundational to their own photographic practice and their ethic of collaboration and sisterhood Share on Facebook Share on TwitterJadyn Miles – Two Months After the Worst Day Ever, 2016
Picturing Black Girlhood is reflective of our times. In our current period of pandemic and racial reckoning, these artists offer us intimacy, rest, renewal and connection Share on Facebook Share on TwitterFabiola Jean Louis – Follow the Drinking Gourd, 2019
The images demand that we witness the full breadth of Black girls and gender-expansive youth on their own terms—and those of the people they will soon become Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSaskia Kahn – Perfect Ten Space That Binds Us, 2019
Pairings and groupings of images throughout Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility encourage new interpretations of iconic images while retelling the history of contemporary photography and film through the eyes and experiences of Black girls Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
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