much ado abt black photography

by Kiani 2 Comments

This week’s introduction to Shange’s work and black photography at the International Center of Photography was exciting and enlightening for so many reasons. As a student of photography and a visual arts major, I have visited the facilities on a number of occasions for classes and shows. It was particularly interesting and relevant to experience the Center in this specific way. My work for my thesis and as a practicing art is so intertwined with my identity and my experiences as a queer person of color from the South in New York at Barnard/Columbia and abroad.

In my previous visits to the ICP, I experienced a very technical and machine-based photography education– an education which I am eternally grateful for and still utilizing in my daily photographic practice. Though, there is something really expansive and inspiring about experiencing one of my first loves, photography, in the context of the work I am compelled to create and discuss. And around the people who I make my work for.

Currently, I’m enrolled in another Harlem Semester course– Leslie Hewitt’s “Freestyle and Displacement in Contemporary Art” that partners with the Studio Museum in Harlem. The institution was founded at the genesis of the Black Arts Movement and continuously strives to create and facilitate dialogue between art and the community of Harlem. I visited the museum with the class on Thursday and was astounded, as usual, by the breadth and depth or the work on display. One piece, in particular, caught my eye– a photograph by artist Kia Labeija titled In Search of the Sweet Life || Kia Labeija on Sugar Hill (2015).

Image Courtesy of The Studio Museum in Harlem

In Search of the Sweet Life || Kia Labeija on Sugar Hill (2015) Image Courtest of the Studio Museum in Harlem

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    Kiani, it's so exciting to have you as a connector between these two very different classes! I'm very intrigued by "Kia Labeija on Sugar Hill" and would have liked to have seen you say more on it from your artists' eye. As a lit. person, I of course focus on the "the Sweet Life" which clearly seems a dialogue with "Sugar" Hill then and now, but is it also a shout-out to *Sweet Breath of Life*?
  2. Tiana Reid
    Like Professor Hall, I'm also curious about how "the sweet life" might have resonances with the "sweet breath of life." And it makes me see a connotation in the Sweet Breath of Life that I hadn't seen before, that is, the struggle for or against notions of the good life. But I also wonder how the brown or browning character of Kia Labeija's image evokes a sweet color. This question re overlapping sensations also elliptically reminds me of your project for this course: how do photos taste?

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