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DDFR Roadshow Visits Northeastern University!
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Wed, 30 Nov 2016 22:04:53 +0000
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Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris visited Northeastern University in Boston, MA as a guest speaker on October 11th. His presentation was hosted by professor William Lancaster from the communication studies department […]
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Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris visited Northeastern University in Boston, MA as a guest speaker on October 11th. His presentation was hosted by professor William Lancaster from the communication studies department and showcased Harris’ Emmy nominated film Through A Lens Darkly and a mini-DDFR multimedia demonstration for students and faculty of Northeastern University.
After his presentation, the students from different cultures and backgrounds including Asia, the Caribbean and Europe shared their own family photographs and amazing stories spanning over 150 years and it was full of tears and laughter.
“Thomas Allen Harris brings a fascinating perspective to the field of communication studies. In our era of contrived and distorted images, it is so refreshing to tap into family photographs as an authentic trove of our humanity.”
– Prof. William Lancaster
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“With Harris’ talk and discussion, I was able to reflect more on the process of archiving photos. I’m definitely concerned about the longevity of our digital footprints, so I’m hoping to take some time to make physical copies of my photos. It was also interesting to hear the stories of the students and faculty members at Northeastern. I’ve been around Northeastern for a while (as a grad student, employee, etc.) and I’m always meeting people with different cultures and backgrounds who are brought together by the common bond of Northeastern. This was another great opportunity to expand my world view and learn more about the individual pieces which make up our Northeastern community.”
– Kira Novak
Also, Antonia, Communication Studies major and aspiring writer at Northeastern University shared her great-great grandfather’s yearbook with the Digital Diaspora Family Reunionteam, telling us her family stories.
Antonia : “Since I was old enough to totter into a Kindergarten classroom, my mother has instilled in me the importance of education. This is, in part, because she’s a teacher, but also because she comes from a long line of African American men and women who prided themselves on obtaining an education, even when it was hard for them to do so”
DDFR
“As a reminder of these values, my great uncle on my mother’s side gifted me with a copy of my great great grandfather, Charles Turner’s, yearbook from pharmacology school. Charles graduated in the class of 1918, and his yearbook tells a story of that time.”
DDFR
“This is Charles’s picture and biography written by the yearbook staff who were, of course, white. Although his bio does mention the fact that he contributed to the yearbook by doing most of the art work, it’s hard to think that the statement he is “not brilliant” (written by the staff) had nothing to do with the racial outlooks of the early 20th century.”
DDFR
“The biographies of some of the other, very few, minority students in the yearbook reflected similar biases. For example, Charles’s Chinese classmate is described as “an elegant representative” from “far off China,” clearly playing into the mystic stereotypes of the far East.”
DDFR
“These images and descriptions reflect a more negative narrative in the yearbook. However, the image of the sorority, Delta Omega Phi, I find to be incredibly uplifting. I love this photo because it features a group of women who were all striving for an education in the medical field at a time when they couldn’t even vote, and the look on every face is of such defiance and determination that it fills me with a resolve of my own to carry on a legacy of education these ladies paved the way for.”
To see more photos from the roadshow, click here.
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Hugh Bell Photo Galleries Now Available to View on GME Website
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Wed, 19 Oct 2016 21:49:06 +0000
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Thomas Allen Harris interviewed the photographer, Hugh Bell back in 2005 and Bell would become a part of our Emmy nominated documentary on the history of Black photographers, Through A Lens Darkly. We are excited […]
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Self by Hugh Bell
Thomas Allen Harris interviewed the photographer, Hugh Bell back in 2005 and Bell would become a part of our Emmy nominated documentary on the history of Black photographers, Through A Lens Darkly. We are excited that under the Gartenberg Media Enterprises‘ (GME) there is a commitment to resurrecting Bell’s career and legacy.
Mambo at the Paladium by Hugh Bell
“Hugh Bell was a renowned art and commercial photographer, who worked in New York City over the course of his entire professional career. Upon his death in 2012, his son-in-law, Richard Martha, was named Executor of the Estate of Hugh Bell. In 2014, GME was engaged on an exclusive basis by the Bell Estate to manage the collection of Hugh Bell’s photographs and to further the artist’s legacy.”
“GME is committed to resurrecting the career of this overlooked photographer, through licensing of his photographs, republishing his out-of-print books, mounting curated exhibitions, and in identifying a long-term repository for this significant collection of photographic works.”
“Bell’s lifelong passion for taking jazz photographs, often referred to as his “Jazz Giants” series, has been published in books and magazines. His jazz photographs have also graced the covers of innumerable vinyl jazz records.”
Billie Holiday by Hugh Bell
“He is most known for his images of the female figure. In 1970, a series of these portraits were published in Avant-garde magazine in a feature entitled, “Bell’s Belles”. Throughout this period, he also traveled to the West Indies, focusing on the region of his geographical heritage. He photographed carnivals in Trinidad and Haiti, and daily life in Antigua. He traveled as well to Brazil, where he took photographs of the local citizenry.”
Hugh Bell passed away on October 31, 2012. He left behind an extensive and wide-ranging photographic legacy that is now ready for rediscovery.
Click here to check out more stories about him, his galleries including Jazz/Spain/Afro-Caribbean and information for licensing.
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Black Photographers Still Matter
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Tue, 11 Oct 2016 22:53:30 +0000
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In a new interview featured in Ebony Magazine, Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris talks about the importance of family photographs especially in African-American history, mentioning his Emmy nominated film Through a […]
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In a new interview featured in Ebony Magazine, Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris talks about the importance of family photographs especially in African-American history, mentioning his Emmy nominated film Through a Lens Darkly and transmedia Digital Diaspora Family Reunion. And just as important, the article pays homage to the importance of Black Photographers in preserving that unique history. Here is an excerpt from the Ebony interview conducted by William Bryant Rozier:
“As the status of the professional photographer has taken a hit, so has the value of the professional photograph, whether it’s taken by a working photographer or by a photo enthusiast.
Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Thomas Allen Harris knew the latter. “Growing up, my grandfather (Albert Sidney Johnson Jr.) was an amateur photographer. Anytime he had all of his grandkids together for Easter or any event, he would take an hour to pose us. That was a ritual that I grew up with,” said the filmmaker.
“Harris’ most notable, most Netflix-able work is the award-winning (recently Emmy-nominated) documentary Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014), telling the root-to-the-fruit quest for social change set by history’s black photographers. Family photography (and family pictures taken by Albert Johnson) leads the way.”
“Harris’ longtime project has taken on the cause of re-energizing the family photograph, making it an all-inclusive, hunt-gather-show-and-tell. Since 2009, Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR) has been touring the country (and overseas) with its multimedia community engagement event, the DDFR Roadshow. DDFR bridges inter-generational and cross-cultural differences, deeply affecting participants in intimate and surprising ways.”
“We educate people about the importance of “puration” in terms of out of all the images they take, which ones they print out and why.”
Family pictures, said Harris, “are just as important now, probably even more so than they were back in the day. Most people are taking digital images using their cell phones, but they’re also not taking their images out, they are losing the images in [all of] those of images we click off everywhere.”
For the full article:
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Thomas Allen Harris Awarded Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College!
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Tue, 03 May 2016 20:46:31 +0000
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Our very own Thomas Allen Harris has embarked on an exciting opportunity: he is currently serving as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College! The prestigious Montgomery Fellowship Program, established in […]
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Our very own Thomas Allen Harris has embarked on an exciting opportunity: he is currently serving as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College!
The prestigious Montgomery Fellowship Program, established in 1977 through gifts from Dartmouth graduates Kenneth Montgomery ’25 and his wife Harle Montgomery, seeks to enrich the experience of Dartmouth students in the classroom primarily by bringing distinguished individuals to the College to live at Montgomery House varying from a few weeks to a full year.
In addition to introducing the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow to Dartmouth College May 9, there will also be a screening of “Through a Lens Darkly” at the Loew Auditorium on May 5, followed by a panel discussion.
Harris notes that “interacting with students and faculty this term is exciting, especially because there is so much curricular focus on #BlackLivesMatter movement which was evolving as a movement as we were editing Through A Lens Darkly as well as in production on Digital Diaspora Family Reunion.
In a way, our film and transmedia project’s focus on the use of representation in the battle for civil rights, helps to contextualize #BlackLivesMatter and its use of digital media in combating police violence.
When Harris is not speaking and presenting, he spends his time writing and developing new projects in the offices of the Montgomery House, which Harris describes as “a magical oasis which affords a beautiful setting to be still, think and write in between cooking and walks around the lake. It’s a good place to call home for a while after two years on the road.”
Harris is the 238th Montgomery Fellow. Past Montgomery Fellows include: Anna Deavere Smith, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Christo, Gerald R. Ford, Larry Kramer, Frank Stella, Lucille Clifton and Bill T. Jones. Dartmouth Faculty and staff nominate prominent individuals to become Montgomery Fellows and then the Montgomery Endowment Steering Committee meets to review these nominations and narrow down the candidate pool. Harris was nominated by Mark J. Williams, Associate Professor, Department of Film and Media Studies who stated: “We’re so happy to have such a gifted and talented filmmaker and artist come to Dartmouth. Harris is a true visionary and has already impacted the campus.”
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A Puerto Rican Story as Seen Through The Family Photo Album & Archive
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Wed, 13 Apr 2016 20:13:19 +0000
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Thomas Allen Harris‘s mentee, Cecilia Aldarondo made a film, Memories of a Penitent Heart about her uncle Miguel. Her film will be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. “I would […]
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Thomas Allen Harris‘s mentee, Cecilia Aldarondo made a film, Memories of a Penitent Heart about her uncle Miguel. Her film will be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.
“I would like to congratulation my mentee Cecilia Aldarondo on her upcoming world premiere of her film, Memories of a Penitent Heart at the Tribeca Film Festival. I had the privilege of working with Cecilia on this wonderful personal documentary through the Fire Light Documentary lab last year and am delighted to see it come into the world! Please try to check it out during its run at Tribeca” – Thomas Allen Harris
Miguel and his family
“Twenty five years after Miguel died from AIDS, his niece, filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo, embarks on an excavation into a quagmire of unresolved family drama. Like many gay men in the 1980s, Miguel moved from Puerto Rico to New York City; he found a career in theater and a rewarding relationship. Yet, on his deathbed he grappled to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholic upbringing. Now, decades after his death, Cecilia locates Miguel’s lover Robert, who has been shunned and demonized by the family, in order to understand the whole story. Braiding recently discovered home movies, interviews, and contemporary vérité footage, Memories of a Penitent Heart dissects a family secret while exploring the AIDS crisis and the rarely heard story of Latino artists who died in the early days of the epidemic. This is a moving story about mistakes of the past and second chances that also questions how faith is used in times of crisis.” – Dan Hunt, one of the member of programming team at the Tribeca Film Festival
Cecilia Aldarondo
Cecilia Aldarondo is one of FILMMAKER Magazine‘s ‘25 New Faces of Independent Film’ of 2015. Her directorial debut Memories of a Penitent Heart received support from the MacDowell Colony, Sundance Institute, IFP, Jerome Foundation, Firelight Media and NYSCA among others. She is Assistant Professor of Film at Skidmore College.
Get the ticket and Visit HERE to see more info!
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Through A Lens Darkly Interviewee Carrie Mae Weems Talks Life & Kitchen Tables
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Wed, 13 Apr 2016 19:36:48 +0000
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One of our very own Through A Lens Darkly photographers, Carrie Mae Weems recently had an interview with W magazine. Below is the whole interview! Carrie Mae Weems Reflects on […]
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One of our very own Through A Lens Darkly photographers, Carrie Mae Weems recently had an interview with W magazine. Below is the whole interview!
Carrie Mae Weems Reflects on Her Seminal, Enduring Kitchen Table Series
Decades ago in Northampton, Massachusetts, Carrie Mae Weems began devoting a part of every single day to photographing herself at her kitchen table. Obsessive in telling the story of the woman she was playing—whom we follow through the course of relationships with her lover, her friends, and her daughter—Weems knew the series would be important to her. She didn’t realize, though, that it would take on historical significance, too, paving the way for a generation of women artists concerned with their own representation, as well as in conversations of race and relationships to boot. Since then, Weems has landed a MacArthur “genius grant” and around 50 solo shows, including the Guggenheim’s first retrospective of an African-American woman. And her Kitchen Table Series has been equally enduring, making its way into plenty of books and museums over the years. It’s now finally getting a stand-alone copy, out at the end of April from Damiani. Here, Weems reflects on why it’s as relevant as ever.
How do you feel about this series now, over 30 years on?
It’s interesting. I started working on it in like 1989 and I finished it in 1990, so it’s been around for a long time. I really do think of it as a seminal body of work—it was the coming together of many, many, many sorts of stops and starts and trials and errors, just that sort of struggle of a young artist to discover the nuance of my own voice, my own photographic style, my own vocal utterance. All those things came together in this piece. I still find it remarkable, and I’m still completely surprised by it, and how it’s still so completely contemporary. It’s very difficult to discern when the work was made; it could have been made 30 years ago, or it could have been made 30 days ago. The sense of time is really displaced within the work. At least I think that that’s true.
Did you have a sense that it was going to be such a seminal work at the time?
No, but I knew that it was important for me. I worked on it constantly, every single day for months and months and months. I knew that I was making images unlike anything I had seen before, but I didn’t know what that would mean. I knew what it meant for me, but I didn’t know what it would mean historically, within the terms of a graphic history.
It started with you trying to create images you thought didn’t exist at that point—ones that properly represented women, and black women in particular. Would you say that those images now exist today?
Oh yes, I think there are certainly more women known to us who are making important and seminal work focused on the dynamic and complex lives of women. People like Mickalene Thomas, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson have come along, and all of us sort of stand in a line, marking a trajectory that’s deeply concerned with the constructed image and representation of the female subject. Yet I think the [Kitchen Table] images are more current now than ever before, and I’m still very much aware of the ways in which women are discounted: They’re undervalued within the world generally, and within the art world in particular. And of course that was something that came up with the Academy Awards this year, right? There’s still sort of a dearth, a lack of representational images of women. And not, you know, like strong, powerful, and capable, that kind of bullshit, but rather just images of black women in the world, in the domain of popular culture. I think it’s one of the reasons that Kitchen Table still proves to be so valuable, or invaluable, to so many women, and not just black women, but white women and Asian women; and not just women, but men as well, have really come to me about the importance of this work in their lives. I find it remarkable.
Man Reading Newspaper photo by Carrie Mae Weems
Why did you originally decide to put yourself in the photos, since the series wasn’t specifically about you?
Because I was the only person around. It really is true. I work often and a lot, and in this case, sometimes I would work at six in the morning or three in the afternoon. I was just simply available. I began to understand, too, that I’m very interested in the performative, and that’s one of the things that the work has actually taught me. I use my body as a landscape to explore the complex realities of the lives of women.
Do you still keep in touch with the others in the photos?
No, not really. It was so many years ago. They were my neighbors, people that I found on the street. The little girl that’s on the cover—I don’t remember her name anymore, though it’s probably in my files—I saw her one day chasing a boy on a bicycle, I think. I thought, ‘There’s my girl, there she is.’ And she looks like me, she looks like she could be my daughter. Some of them are friends and some of them are colleagues, all living in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is where the work was made. I go back, maybe once a year or something like that. The apartment isn’t there anymore, but I do have friends in the area.
The series is most known for its black-and-white photos, but there’s a large text component, too. How do you see the relationship between the two?
I added the text just as I was wrapping up, and it was wonderful. A man had come to visit me, and we had this wonderful talk about men and women, about our relationships, and he left and then I took a long drive. I always drive with my tape recorder, and I started reciting this text. By the time I got home, it was done, and I went upstairs to my computer and transcribed it. But you know, I’ve always thought that both the photographs and text operate quite independently, and together they form yet a third thing, something that is dynamic and complex and allows you to read something else about the photographs. I don’t think of them as being necessarily dependent on one another. Rather, they exist side by side, in tandem.
Would you say that the series is as much about black representation as it is about women?
I think it’s important in relationship to black experience, but it’s not about race. It’s not the thing that’s foremost important about the work at all. But I think it can be used in that way, for sure.
Homework photo by Carrie Mae Weems
Do you think it’s been interpreted as the main point of the work?
Well yes, because I think that most work that’s made by black artists is considered to be about blackness. [Laughs.] Unlike work that’s made by white artists, which is assumed to be universal at its core. I really sort of claimed the same space, and I think the work in many ways is universal at its core, but we can certainly also use it to talk about the position of black representation. That was not the intent of making the work, but it can function in that way, and to talk about how photographs are constructed, since it uses the tropes of documentary but in highly constructed, staged images. We can use it to talk about the relationships between men and women, women and children, women and women, and to have large discussions about the issue of the representations of blacks and their relationships. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the work has sort of stood the test of time and entered the culture in this unique way: You can use it to have many, many kinds of discussions about things that are going on in the world today. You know, we know that for the most part the work that’s made by women is simply not valued in the same way as work that’s made by men. It just isn’t, and it’s something that we have to struggle against consistently, persistently, if we want to see change in that area. I’m looking forward to a leveling of the playing field.
Have you found your treatment as an artist has gotten better? You’ve definitely found some mainstream success along the way.
No. I mean of course, you know, I’m acknowledged, I’m offered awards, and those kinds of things, they’re really wonderful. But I’m aware of what it means not to have the work valued seriously, so that you’re always struggling for a fair price for the work, that you have to fight for that.
So you’re saying that you still feel like you have to struggle?
Absolutely, I do. And that I’m aware that I have to. And you know, from my perspective, I do this not simply for me, but I do it for the larger cause of equality, that I’m interested in all aspects of equality, and when I feel as though women through my own experience are not being taken as seriously as others, then I think it’s necessary to speak up. I’m not always the most popular girl in the room [laughs], but I think that it’s important.
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Changing the Narrative on Race in America Through Advertising
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Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:24:45 +0000
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– Don Perry, CEO, Digital Diaspora Family Reunion One day after President Obama gave the keynote address at SXSW In