Photographers of Color Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Geleve Grice was born on January 16, 1922, in Tamo, a small farming town located fifteen miles from Pine Bluff. At thirteen, Grice moved with his parents, Toy and Lillie, to Little Rock, where he graduated from Dunbar High School in 1942. An accomplished sportsman, Grice made the all-state football team his senior year of high school and later played for a service team during his four-year stint in the Navy. Grice entered the U.S. Navy immediately after graduation in the heat of World War II, eventually serving in the Pacific, where he guarded Japanese prisoners.

Grice began his photography career as a high school senior. L. C. and Daisy Bates, publishers of the Arkansas State Press newspaper, encouraged his journalistic interests by creating a column that featured his images and writings about fellow Dunbar classmates. While in the Navy, Grice was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Illinois and went to Chicago on leave, where he took photos of the city’s nightlife, capturing unique images of famous black Americans like Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong, and famed guitarist T-Bone Walker.

After completing his military service on April 23, 1946, Grice enrolled at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N College), later to be known as UAPB, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff where he majored in psychology. He also played football for the Golden Lions, served as yearbook photographer, and was eventually hired in 1947 as the campus photographer. In September 1949, Grice married his college sweetheart, Jean Bell of North Little Rock, a singer who became the first black graduate student in the music department of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. They had one son, Michael.

When he graduated in 1950, Grice had already opened the professional photography studio to earn his living for the next forty years. He frequently worked outside the studio for the Arkansas State Press and various local television stations. Grice’s photos also appeared in such national publications as Ebony, Jet, and Life magazines.

One of the highlights of Grice’s career came while still a college student in 1948, when he was asked to document the integration of the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville. As a result, Silas Hunt, accompanied by attorneys Wiley Branton and Harold Flowers, became the first black student to enroll at an all-white Southern university since Reconstruction.

In 1958, Grice photographed Martin Luther King Jr.’s commencement address at AM&N College. Because Grice was often called upon to chronicle significant happenings in the black community, his collection includes images of other notable black Americans, such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Ray Charles, Thurgood Marshall, and Muhammad Ali.

In 1998, the UAPB art department sponsored an exhibit of his work, Those Who Dare to Dream: The Works of Arkansas Photographer Geleve Grice. The Old State House Museum in Little Rock followed in 2003 with a more extensive exhibition of his work, A Photographer of Note: Arkansas Artist Geleve Grice. In 2003, the University of Arkansas Press published a book of the same title by Robert Cochran, featuring many of Grice’s most captivating photos.

Grice died on August 17, 2004.

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/geleve-grice-1161/

https://digitalcollections.uark.edu/digital/collection/Civilrights/id/157

https://news.uark.edu/articles/9559/diane-blair-and-geleve-grice-papers-donated-to-mullins

https://arkansasresearch.uark.edu/a-photographer-of-note-arkansas-artist-geleve-grice/

https://fulbright.uark.edu/departments/english/directory/index/uid/rcochran/name/Robert-Cochran/

https://youtu.be/bUqlnPFeFew

Raised in the Southern states of Tennessee and Texas, André Ramos-Woodard (he/ they) is a contemporary artist who uses their work to emphasize the repercussions of contemporary and historical discrimination. Primarily working with photo-based collage, text, and drawing, they convey ideas of communal and personal identity centralized within internal conflicts. Ramos-Woodard is influenced by their direct experience with life – he is queer and African American, both of which are obvious targets for discrimination. They use their art to accent spaces of both communal understanding and disconnect between them and the viewer, specifically those of Black liberation, queer justice, and those in positions of power and privilege that lack the information to critically recognize problems within minority groups in contemporary culture. Ramos-Woodard received his BFA from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and is currently pursuing his MFA at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

https://www.andreramoswoodard.com/

https://www.instagram.com/andreduane/?hl=en

https://edublog.pdnonline.com/2019/07/in-a-powerful-body-of-work-mfa-candidate-andre-ramos-woodard-explores-his-anxiety-and-depression.html

https://www.inthein-between.com/andre-ramos-woodard/

http://lenscratch.com/2020/07/andre-ramos-woodard-a-mediocre-ass-nigga/

https://digitalmag.pdnedu.com/pdnedu/fall_2019/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1523601#articleId1523601

https://www.photographersofcolor.org/

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/

https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor

BIO:
Rachelle Mozman Solano grew up in New York City of parents who shared the experience of immigration. She works between New York and Panama the country of her maternal family. Starting often from her biography and family history Mozman Solano explores how culture shapes individuals, how environment conditions behavior. Her work is concerned with the intersection of mythology, history, economics, and the psyche through photographs and films that confound fact and fictional narrative. In her work narrative is explored as inherent to our humanity and shaped by perception. Mozman Solano’s art is deeply informed by her clinical work in psychoanalysis. In 2019 Mozman Solano will exhibit Metamorphosis of Failure at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, and in 2018 she exhibited El espejo opaco de Gauguin in Arteconsult, Panamá, Panamá. In 2017 she exhibited in A New Region of the World at Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków, Poland and LARA (Latin American Roaming Art), Panamá, Panamá. In 2016 Mozman Solano exhibited in the X Bienal Centroaméricana and in 2015 she exhibited in Do/Tell at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Portraiture Now: Staging the Self at Americas Society. Mozman Solano has been awarded residencies at LMCC workspace, Smack Mellon, The Camera Club of New York, and Light Work. Her work has been published in the Light Work annual Contact Sheet, Presumed Innocence, Exit magazine and numerous other publications.

Mozman is a Fulbright Fellow, and has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery at Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C, the Americas Society, New York, New York, National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York, the Chelsea Museum, New York, New York, The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, New Jersey, Festival de la luz at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina the Instituto Cultural Itau, São Paulo, Brazil, the Friese Museum, Berlin, Germany, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City, Mexico, Festival Biarritz, Biarritz, France, as well as the IX Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador.

This podcast is made possible by the University of Arkansas School of Art endowment.

http://www.rachellemozman.com/

https://www.instagram.com/rachellemozman/?hl=en

https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/

Claire's work explores intersecting ideas of identity, the other, and the psychology of knowledge and power. The constructed photograph is integral to her arts practice. She received her BFA in Photography and BA in Art History from Arizona State University.

Claire’s work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad including solo exhibitions of Mimesis at the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and Art Intersection.

She received an Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, an Individual Artist Grant Award supported by the Creative Capacity Fund and the Contemporary Forum Artist Grant.

Most recently she has been in residence at LATITUDE in CHICAGO, and had a solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. Claire will also be giving a lecture at the Society for photographic education north west conference this September.

Website: https://www.claireawarden.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/claireawarden/
99 Moons Project: https://www.instagram.com/99moonsproject/

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/
https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor

Andrew Jackson is an artist interested in exploring the challenges of selfhood, representation and narration. His works focus on transnational migration, home, belonging, relatedness, space & place, memory, family and storytelling. As well as the ways in which photography can challenge, reshape, revise and disseminate history, and it's telling, within discreet, intimate and personal ways.

He is an award-winning recipient of the Autograph ABP /Light Work (AIR) International Photography Residency in Syracuse, New York and a graduate of the MA Documentary photography program at Newport in Wales.

In 2018, he was shortlisted for the Elliott Erwitt Fellowship and the Magnum Foundation Social Justice fellowship. His most recent work, titled Another Place Like Home a photographic and text-based work that explores our inherent desire to belong, was commissioned by Multistory.

Website: https://www.andrewjackson.photography
Another Place Like Home: https://andrewjackson.anotherplacelikehome.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/andrewjacksonphotographer/

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/
https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor

Bethany Mollenkof is a filmmaker + photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. She creates both short documentary and still photography focused at the intersections of gender, identity and culture. Through portraits and interviews she finds meaning in telling stories that reframe familiar narratives.

Awards include: Women Photograph Grantee, 2019, Glassbreaker Films Grantee, 2018, The Los Angeles Times Team Pulitzer Prize, 2016, Eddie Adams workshop class of XXVII, POYI

In this episode, we talk about Bethany’s time at the LA times, what it’s like to be a woman of color in the industry today, freelancing, and her latest project on women working midwifery in Alabama

https://www.bethanymollenkof.com/
https://www.instagram.com/fancybethany/?hl=en

https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/

This podcast is made possible by the University of Arkansas School of Art

Zora Murff received his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and holds a BS in Psychology from Iowa State University. Combining his education in human services and art, Zora’s work explores how photography is intertwined with social and cultural constructs.

His work has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and featured in various publications such as Aperture Magazine, The New Yorker, VICE Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, and The New York Times.

Zora was named a 2019 Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist, also, an honoree for PDN’s 30: New & Emerging Photographers to Watch, was and selected for the 2019 Light Work Artist-in-Residence Program.

http://www.zora-murff.com/
https://www.instagram.com/zorajmurff/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/
https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor

Jasmine Clarke is a 25-year-old photographer born (and based) in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Bard College in 2018 with a BA in Photography. Inspired by the surreal qualities of our waking world, her images play with the tension between fiction and reality. Her images have been shown at Howard Greenberg Gallery in Manhattan and are currently on view at Photoville in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Photo Vogue Festival in Milan, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.

 When I look in the mirror, I want to believe that what I am seeing is an extension of myself even though I know that it isn’t. I’m seeing a reflection (an illusion) of me and my world. I can never quite trust a mirror. 

 A picture creates a similar false sense of reality. The nature of photography tells us that what we are seeing is true, but it’s not. It is a selective truth, or even a fiction.

One night in Jamaica, as my father and I drove through the mountains, he described a recurring dream: he is in his hometown, Saint Mary's, at a certain winding road that’s shaped like an N, trying to catch the bus. He misses it and has to run up the mountain through the bush and slide down the other side to catch it. This is his only dream set in Jamaica. He told me as we approached the N. I listened while chewing on my sugar cane. It’s strange hearing about a dreamscape while physically going through it—like déjà vu. 

I feel this sense of familiarity driving through my father’s dream. But what’s more overwhelming is the sensation of jamais vu: foreignness in what should be known. The moon you see, the air you breathe, and the flowers you smell are all suddenly unfamiliar. You’ve moved, traveled—maybe even transcended—although you don’t know to where. You look in the mirror and see yourself, but can’t be sure that it’s the same reflection you saw yesterday.

This is why I photograph: to capture a trace of the unexplainable. My pictures are where dreams meet the physical world and earthly things take on higher meaning. I search for the uncanny. I uncover what is hidden. An obscured face, a wet flower, a dark shadow.

http://jasmine-clarke.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jasmineclarke0/?hl=en

https://www.bard.edu/news/guardian-spotlights-work-by-grad-jasmine-clarke-18-in-photo-vogue-2020-11-10

https://www.vogue.it/fotografia/article/photo-vogue-festival-2020-all-in-this-together-30-photographers-exhibition

https://photoville.nyc/the-lit-list-2020-photographers-to-watch-exhibit-hire/

https://www.blueskygallery.org/upcoming-exhibitions

https://www.photographersofcolor.org/

https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/?hl=en

https://fulbright.uark.edu/departments/art/

https://www.instagram.com/uarkart/?hl=en

Raymond Thompson Jr. is a photographer whose work focuses on race, identity and contested histories. He currently works as a Multimedia Producer at West Virginia University where is is also pursuing his MFA in photography. He received his MA in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in American studies from the University of Mary Washington. His freelance clients include The New York Times, ProPublica, Google, Buzzfeed News, Merrell, NBC News, and the Associated Press. 

In the 1930s, migrant laborers came from all over the region to work on the construction of a 3-mile tunnel to divert the New River near Fayetteville, WV. During the process, workers were exposed to pure silica dust due to improper drilling techniques. Many developed a lung disease known as silicosis, which is estimated to have caused the death of nearly 800 workers. Up to two-thirds of those workers were African American. Besides a small plaque at the Hawks Nest State Park, which lists a significantly lower number than the actual number killed, there is very little to mark the site. There is also sparse visual documentation available about the event. There has been an effort to erase this tragic moment in history from the memory of West Virginia.

In Appalachian Ghosts, I explore visual possibilities of what that time and place looked like, using primary-source materials to recreate the workers’ experiences in photographs. I have also recontextualized and re-presented archive photographs, originally made to document the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel dam and powerhouse. The few people caught in the photographic archive were often nameless and voiceless workers. Specifically, I’m looking at what has been left out of African-American visual history, which to date has mainly been documented with a colonial gaze. From this standpoint, I have sought to re/create work that has been informed by and made from historical documents and photographs.

My research also focused on working with non-visual resources that inspired the creation of new works. I researched news clips, letters, poetry and other cultural resources looking for information that described the experience of working in the tunnel. I was particularly struck by a poem from Muriel Rukeyser’s book The Book of the Dead called “George Robinson: Blues:”

As dark as I am. when I came out at morning after the tunnel at night

with a white man, nobody could have told which man was white.

The dust had covered us both, and the dust was white.

-Muriel Rukeyser “The Book of the Dead”

Rukeyser’s book, along with other primary-source documents, inspired a series of images that focuses on the silica dust that covered everything at the work site.

http://www.raymondthompsonjr.com/

https://www.rustbeltbiennial.com/#winners

http://lenscratch.com/2020/07/raymond-thompson-jr-the-the-2020-lenscratch-student-prize-1st-place-winner/

https://vimeo.com/376951187

https://www.epistemmag.com/reclaiming-the-black-image-in-nature-and-in-photography/

https://www.photographersofcolor.org/

https://www.instagram.com/photogsofcolor/

https://twitter.com/photogsofcolor