This powerful collection highlights the importance of snapshots in
Black American life: as tools to challenge stereotypes, and as a way to
document family and culture
Thoughtfully illustrated, this volume highlights a selection of
photographs of African American family life between the 1970s and the
early 2000s--pictures that were lost by their original owners and then
found by the artist Zun Lee on a street in Detroit in 2012, marking the
beginning of the Fade Resistance collection of more than 4,000
Polaroids. Lee describes the collection as an important record of Black
visual self-representation and a means to "reflect the way Black people
saw themselves on their terms--without the intention of being seen, or
judged, by others." To Lee, these powerful photographs are an expression
of "Black life mattering."
These vivid images chronicle milestones such as weddings, birthdays and
graduations, as well as quiet daily moments, offering contemporary views
long ignored or erased by mainstream culture. Together, these works
highlight the role snapshots have played in Black life, as tools to
challenge stereotypical portrayals and as a means to memorialize family,
culture and heritage.
Topics such as self-representation, visual history and the social power
of photographs are addressed in critical texts by Sophie Hackett,
Stefano Harney, Zun Lee and Fred Moten, and an original contribution by
celebrated poet Dawn Lundy Martin.
