Lauren Machen: Elemental.

© Lauren Machen.

The name of Lauren Machen’s premiere art photography series was almost Finally. As in, “I am finally addressing something that is at the very core of my being,” states the artist, who has previously worked in art direction for musicians such as St. Vincent and Rihanna. “Finally because a lot of subtle racism that people of color have had to struggle [with] are bubbling to the surface. People who aren’t of color just simply thought it didn’t exist or we were past that.”

Instead, Machen named the series Elemental, as in, “The very basis of my being. What my soul feels. My truth. Being mixed race, I was left to just sort of float in space because we didn’t really talk about race and ethnicity in my household… This is about peeling the layers away. Taking a moment to identify as I am rather than how others think I am or what I should be.”

Machen cites the 2016 election as a turning point for how she sees her racial identity, and even more specifically, Grey’s Anatomy actor Jesse Williams’s knockout acceptance speech for the BET Humanitarian Award. One of Williams’s most prominent lines from that speech was, “Just because we’re magical doesn’t mean we’re not real,” and its resonance is felt in Machen’s photos that capture surreal insertions of earthly elements into stark, honest portraits of people of color.

“I chose to incorporate the classical elements in the photographs: water, earth, fire, air, and also used falling sand as a symbol of passing time,” Machen explains. “There’s a mystery and magic to these elements, yet they are very real.

© Lauren Machen.

A brilliant series. You can read and see more at The Creators Project and Lauren Machen’s website.

Remembrance: The 1917 Silent Protest Parade.

Photograph of the 1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade by Underwood and Underwood (courtesy James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library).

The call to the march by the organizing committee of the 1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade (courtesy James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library).

In a petition to the White House, the marchers called on President Woodrow Wilson to take action, stating that in the “last thirty-one years 2,867 colored men and women have been lynched by mobs without trial. … We believe that this spirit of lawlessness is doing untold injury to our country and we submit that the record proves that the States are either unwilling or unable to put down lynching and mob violence.”

The organizers ended their list of “why do we march” reasons with:

We march because the growing consciousness and solidarity of race coupled with sorrow and discrimination have made us one: a union that may never be dissolved in spite of shallow-brained agitators, scheming pundits and political tricksters who secure a fleeting popularity and uncertain financial support by promoting the disunion of a people who ought to consider themselves as one.

It’s not possible to read about this march, or look at the images without seeing all the terrible parallels from 1917 to 2017. Lynch mobs may not roam at will now, but murderous cops are allowed to roam, and they are not punished for the thousands, every single year, of killings of Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic people. People are still marching. People are still taking a stand. And it’s beyond sadness that in all this time, these things are still needed.

You can see and read much more at Hyperallergic.

Light.

From rq: Firelight (first three – and yeah, blue, the phone camera does weird colour-compensation things sometimes, but it’s kind of cool; the last photo is taken through a wreath of oak flowers, I was told it would make a cool framing); artificial light. Oh, I love firelight. So warm and inviting, it speaks of good times. Click for full size!

© rq, all rights reserved.