Yesterday, today and tomorrow

At the request of the Cincinnati Art Museum, I spent more than five months photographing Black and Brown artists in the region as they made new work inspired by the photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop and painter David Driskell. Both were the focus of exhibitions at the museum during winter and spring 2022.

I walked through neighborhoods, schools, museums, and listened to lectures to witness firsthand how our community amplifies our voices through art, while creating new work alongside them in the form of a photo essay and archival book.

For what felt like the first time in a long time, we prioritized Black voices in the Midwest, and created a flowing conversation between our history, current issues, and our future.

The inspiration for the regional artists came from two exhibitions presented at the Cincinnati Art Museum: Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop and David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History.

The Kamoinge Workshop is a groundbreaking African American photographers’ collective founded in New York City in 1963, responding to the Civil Rights era and leading parts of the Black Arts Movement. The founders chose the name Kamoinge—meaning “a group of people acting and working together” in the Gikuyu language of Kenya—to reflect their shared dedication to community, collective action, and a global outlook.

David Driskell (1931–2020) was one of the most revered American artists of his generation, long recognized for his vibrant and versatile work as a painter and printmaker. His art combines keen observations of America with the imagery and aesthetic innovations of the African diaspora.

Context is important: the Cincinnati Art Museum and the two exhibitions sit within Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood, a place with a rich cultural history, and where several of the themes covered in the Kamoinge and Driskell exhibitions are directly connected to the lives of people who call this place home.

I was really interested in documenting the parts of the neighborhood that are underappreciated—the barbershops, bus stations, houses—but are the true glue of a community.

Countess V. Winfrey (Dayton, OH) is an artist and choreographer who created a new site-specific three-part dance that was performed at the Cincinnati Art Museum.  Titled Homage: What was, Is, To Come, the performance brings to light the Black experience of the past and present and the dream of a Black future.

Cincinnati Art Museum hosted a series of discussions and events celebrating creativity through the Black lens led by Black scholars and established artists. The conversations focused on the formation of Black artist collectives and celebrated Black progress.

Wordplay, a Cincinnati nonprofit focused on youth storytelling, led a writer’s room with Aiken New Tech High School where they wrote spoken word poems inspired by the Kamoinge Workshop and Driskell exhibitions, and later performed them inside the galleries of the Cincinnati Art Museum. The workshops were led by Spring Starr Pillow of Wordplay.

It was beautiful to watch their entire process from ideation to recitation. What follows are images of the writing process along with a selection of their poems:

I followed photographers Briana Davis, Louis Rideout, Frank Duane Young, and Allen Woods as they mentored aspiring young Black artists on process and practice of photography, culminating in a series of group exhibitions titled Active Imagination. This was the most meta part of the experience, but also rewarding to see so many young Black photographers wanting to tell their stories.