This project explores the concept of Black British/diasporic cultural signifiers, borrowing from the 19th-century photographic style of work that saw black people used as the subjects for eugenics research and ethnographic classification purposes. Such as Louis Agassiz’s slave portraits which were created for the purpose of ‘proving’ the black body as ‘inferior’ to their white counterparts.
I want to subvert these oppressive tropes and challenge this racialised regime of representation in how black people are seen, continuing to try and reclaim our power by documenting ourselves. In a hope to continue to add to the collective consciousness of black representation by creating an alternative narrative in black photographic history.
This project accompanies Can You Sit for Me?
