Thinking About Photography

The information I accumulated on Port Republic’s black community prompted experiments with various formats for my work; the current prints often incorporate narrative passages with the photograph to describe aspects of the communities that could not otherwise be represented. Defining the format that would express both forms of visual experience (seeing people and places with a camera and seeing people and places through documents and oral histories) has been an evolving process. My first exhibitions were presentations of the camera image and text side by side as in a diptych, printed onto separate pieces of photographic paper. As I began to use digital media, I found ways to bring the photograph and narrative panels into a single image. The current works include image and text, joined in a manner that is quite different than the traditional diptych, the print hinges together the seen and unseen worlds of black experience within these few communities.