Ayana V. Jackson

Ayana V. Jackson (born May 14, 1977) is an American photographer and filmmaker. Quotes I was made aware, before I even studied slavery, before I studied civil rights, before I studied colonialism, before I understood racism as a structural problem, that outside forces were intent on making me  feel ashamed of being black, And I had a sense that I was going to carry that to my death bed. Due to the racially divided history of the country I was born in, the presence of my body in certain spaces is problematized and in some cases not welcome unless it performs in a certain way. I mine 18th and 19th century Western art and early photographs for content. I ask how the black body has been portrayed, who and what has been left out of the frame, and start from there. When I can’t find them, I invent and perform the characters I wish I had seen as a young girl. I imagined myself as Elizabeth Regina’s undersea black mirror figure. In this work I am building a counter universe. This is a work rooted in speculative fiction, In some cases, the characters bring forth characteristics associated with Coastal African water spirits that continue to be revered in present day African and African Diaspora communities. In other cases, I am inventing characters that might live in the fictional land of Drexciya at the bottom of the Atlantic. It hit me in my gut, While the reality of the drowned mothers is a horrid truth of the slave trade, they were discarded as sick cargo, Drexciya as an aquatopia is of course a myth. But history has taught us that many societies embrace all sorts of mythologies to make the horrors or discomforts of the present more bearable. At the time that I made Archival Impulse and Maria di Latte, I was preoccupied with the way that the history of photography is intertwined in the construction and perpetuation of racialized and gendered stereotypes. “In the case of the former, I began to consider studio portraits commissioned by black women who documented themselves with photography and in the latter, the story of Sarah Forbes Bonnetta, Queen Victoria’s God Daughter. At the time of its making, I felt that both sets of reference imagery fell outside the general perception of 19th and 20th century black womanhood. I only spent three semesters as an unenrolled student, but if you look at Katharina’s work, you can see her fingerprint all over me. I am privileged to not only have studied her, but to also know her. We check in from time to time, She has taught me that there is an urgency to the work we are doing, it is not just for our own healing as non-white women or people, it is for the healing of all of humanity. We are living in a Eurocentric era that has promoted Eurocentric ideas of beauty, civilisation, education and religion. Many people have suffered from having their identities disgraced through a racist colonial gaze.  There are many religious mythologies all over the world. The West likes to call them witchcraft but all traditional belief systems are essentially a web of mythologies. My father explained to me that African or Eastern mythologies are just as worth being familiar with  as the Greek or Roman. I was struck by how I was lead to look down upon the myths or religions coming from the region of the world where people looked most like me. As a young person, the world was telling me that in order to be worthy, I had to be something else, someone else. Thankfully, my father put the world into perspective so I could have a sense of pride. I think early photography is complicit in building the barriers that keep us apart,And it has the potential to help destroy them. Through The Lens Of Humanity With Photographer Ayana V. Jackson, September 23 2019 External Links Category:Photographers Category:1977 births Category:1970s