Nona Faustine, a photographer who used her work to focus on the perseverance of Black ladies, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist final yr, confirmed her passing on social media. A reason behind demise was not specified.
ARTnews has reached out to Increased Photos, Faustine’s New York gallery.
In methods each provocative and delightful, Faustine’s pictures explored circumstances afflicting Black ladies throughout time. She incessantly photographed herself in ways in which thought of how her physique acted as a report of histories of exploitation and empowerment.
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“The true lives of Black ladies in the US, if not on the planet, should not seen,” she advised the photographer Carla J. Williams final yr in BOMB magazine. “I needed to indicate our lives and who we’re. We’re very particular. Not simply due to our struggling however due to our magnificence and power. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.”
Her most well-known sequence, “White Sneakers,” concerned visiting websites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some photos from the sequence, she pictured herself within the nude, sporting only a pair of white pumps, in locations such because the intersection at 74 Wall Road, the place enslaved folks have been as soon as auctioned.
To create that image, she needed to enlist mates to make sure cops wouldn’t discover the bare artist. “Placing myself on the market in the midst of the intersection at Wall Road with ongoing site visitors was an enormous danger,” she told Musée, recalling that it was usually under freezing when she disrobed.
Faustine started the “White Sneakers” sequence in 2012 and was not but completed with it by the point it was surveyed on the Brooklyn Museum in 2024, in what was billed as her first-ever institutional present. She was impressed to begin it after studying up on Sarah Baartman, a South African Khoikhoi girl who was ogled by Westerners in the course of the nineteenth century as a freak present attraction in Europe.
In that context, the sneakers are wealthy with symbolism. “They symbolize what Black ladies have been denied publicly and privately,” wrote Pamela Sneed in 4Columns final yr. “Due to racism, misogyny, and extra, what is usually denied is company. Faustine, in charge of the digicam and the lens, provides reclamation.”
One of many more moderen photos from the sequence, Benevolent spirits, tracing steps free naked ft from this world to the opposite (2021), options simply the pumps themselves, with out Faustine current. Organized across the sneakers are shells and bits of sea glass. “We’re compelled to recall the Black ladies who’ve perished from this earth,” wrote Alana Pockros within the New York Occasions. “It’s an enduring picture for us to remove, in order that we by no means, ever neglect what transpired in our very personal metropolis.”
Nona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Crown Heights. Images was throughout her. She credited her father and uncle, each of whom have been pictures fans, with stoking an curiosity within the medium, and recalled spending time along with her household’s photograph album.
She studied pictures on the College of Visible Arts, graduating in 1997. Initially, she had plans to change into a panorama photographer and pursued her ardour as an undergraduate, toting round her discipline digicam along with her when she visited New York’s parks. However a substantial change had taken place by the point she went again to high school in 2011, this time on the Worldwide Heart of Images at Bard Faculty.
She had begun to give attention to folks: “Mitochondria,” a sequence begun in 2008, was a tribute to ladies in her household, with photos of her mom, her sister, and her daughter. “I needed to present my daughter the identical reward my father gave me: a visible diary,” she told Lens, the New York Occasions’s pictures weblog. “As a single mom, I needed her to see how a lot she was beloved.”
Black ladies continued to be the topic of her work. In Say Her Identify (2016), Faustine photographed herself mendacity down in her household’s Flatbush condo, posed as if she have been deceased. It was a tribute to Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after being arrested by a state trooper in 2015.
Different works interrogated American historical past extra broadly. One physique of pictures function distinctly American websites—the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and others—which can be pictured behind bars. Doing so leaves these websites partially hidden from public view as a result of Faustine was exploring “how historical past is rotated,” as she as soon as mentioned. “What’s not noted, what’s included, what are the lies. And, who will get celebrated.”
Faustine had lately accomplished a fellowship with the American Academy in Rome. In an interview with the American Academy in Rome, she mentioned she had spent her time in Italy “exploring the African presence in historic Rome by landscapes and self-portraits.” Her daughter, Queen, had made the journey to Italy along with her.
“It’s a surprise to see all of present-day Rome—up to date, trendy, and historic—peeking beneath the floor in every single place,” she mentioned. “What it might have been and who was there.”
