Intimate an american family photo album6/30/2023 The book honors the craft and contribution of the amateur family photographer, an unsung figure who has for generations captured and preserved the most delicate moments of Black life.īlack Archives conveys the idea that family snapshots and portraits can serve as a respite from the outside world and its gaze. Black Archives is a tangible and intimate artifact that widens the idea of Blackness in the United States, bridging past, present, and future through familial archiving practices. The book expands on a long-standing project of Cherlise’s, which began in 2011 as a Tumblr page and then developed into its own website. I was reminded of those lessons when reading Black Archives: A Photographic Celebration of Black Life, by the multidisciplinary artist Renata Cherlise. Only now is it clear to me that those books provided an early visual literacy for the extraordinary in ordinary Black life. I wasn’t aware at the time that I was studying composition, depth of field, mood, and intimacy when looking at her pictures. Her beautiful portraits-of my cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and great-grandparents in southeastern Wisconsin-captured silly faces, warm cuddles, flawless stunting. Or at least that was what I thought when, as a child, I’d page through the family photo albums at her home. In our family, my aunt Burnette was the designated photographer.
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