BLM in Black and White

2 Minutes Read Time

A black-and-white photo of a child taking a photo of a sea of Black Lives Matter protesters — *Child Documenting BLM Rally*, 2020 black-and-white digital photograph

Artist’s Statement

Making a photograph involves finding ways in which a fixed frame can house the complex intersections between light and shadow, stillness and movement, proximity and distance, the individual and the societal, mortality and the metamorphosis of time. Being African American can mean surviving the perilous crossroads between history’s severities and the future’s indeterminate pliability.

As an African American photographer, I prioritize making space for the moments and the people whose essences represent the ongoing interplay between history, society, and the individual soul. While making black-and-white portraits in public places with natural or available light and choosing subjects who are in motion or going about their daily lives, I invite the resonant exchanges between public circumstances and private consciousness and emotion.

Throughout 2020 and 2021, because of—among other conditions and events—the pandemic’s highlighting of economic and health-care inequities, and continued violence by police against unarmed BIPOC community members, the dynamics of civic and personal existence for Black and Brown people have intensified, revealing new challenges and depths to our grief and our brilliance. Walking through city streets with a full-frame camera and a 35 mm prime lens, I am attempting to portray the unfolding nuances of people’s insistence on truth and beauty.

Marcus Jackson

is a poet and photographer who holds an MFA from New York University. Jackson is the author of two books of poems, and his work has appeared in such publications as American Poetry Review, the New Yorker, and New York Times Magazine. Jackson teaches at Ohio State University.

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Artist’s Statement

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