Last Updated on 05/14/2024 by Chris Gampat
Would you believe me if I told you that slavery was present throughout more of American History than when it wasn’t? Slavery effectively ended in 1865, but the deep, multi-generational scars and trauma persist. It’s barely been 160 years, and both therapy and wellness have only become more socially accepted since the pandemic of 2020. Lots of people would turn to their families for help, but for slaves, that was mostly erased. This won’t be apparent to most people when viewing Nona Faustine: White Shoes at the Brooklyn Museum. And despite this exhibit being the closest thing to a photographer’s dream in a big institution like this, it’s a series you must ruminate on.
Nona Faustine: White Shoes can be seen at the Brooklyn Museum until July 7th. There is an ASL tour on June 8th for anyone who wants to experience it.
Though I can’t relate to African slavery in America, my family still has deep generational scars that we aren’t even aware of. I’m a Guyanese American man born in Queens, NY — that means I’m from Guyana in South America and not Ghana in Africa. You might know Guyana right now for either our food or the fact that we’re about to become one of the richest countries in the world due to oil discoveries. Venezuela states that the oil is actually theirs, and NATO has actually become involved in the issue. However, it’s not talked about in mainstream American media.
What you probably don’t realize is that a massive portion of the population is from India. My ancestors were tricked into what some call indentured servitude — but it’s actually more real slavery because little evidence is shown of tactile compensation. That’s been the case since 1838, and my family still doesn’t have a lot of our connections to our Indian ancestors. And when I say Indian here, I mean people from India, not indigenous people of South America.
In those two paragraphs alone, I’ve unpacked quite a lot for many people to perhaps close this article and move on. But that won’t help the problem.
Nona Faustine: White Shoes addresses a much bigger problem here. We’ve erased the history of African slavery, which is good in some ways for society as it’s indeed Northern tradition to burn down the Confederacy. But it doesn’t provide reparations to all the people who descend from slaves. In fact, New York was one of the last states in the North to get rid of slavery.
Where the work lacks technical excellence, it succeeds with originality, evolutionary storytelling, and rawness. The images look like they could’ve been shot with a phone, but that isn’t what matters here. What matters more is the hero of the story. Nona is at the center of various self-portraits. She is nude in many of them, and as the story progresses, she gains more and more clothing. Towards the end, the clothing goes from a glamorous gown to Sunday-best attire. The photographs don’t stand out on their own individually but work cohesively together to form the entire project.
I questioned why Nona was nude — as the Editor in Chief of one of the last standing photo-specialty publications in America, I often see it overused without real purpose to the story. The Brooklyn Museum’s Allison Day, Senior Manager of Family and Community programs, presented the idea of vulnerability to me. While that makes sense, I wonder then about the attire choices in the story’s progression.
Nona’s images are shot in various places throughout NYC, where slavery was a big part of its history. There are photographs shot in every borough of NYC and a map that corresponds well to each location. But as you look at the images, you wouldn’t necessarily think about the traditional way that we see slavery. In the most abstract terms, we’d see a nude woman in public places. Without the context, I’d think that it was a story about a woman trying to find herself and then finally becoming more complete in the end.
Someone is then bound to wonder why these images would make it into a museum. That’s where the originality comes in. There’s nothing really like this out there. Much of what people who identify as photographers make these days is targeted at following trends in social media. It leaves their portfolios looking very dated. But Nona’s work is timeless in that it transcends the current times and expands upon over two centuries of issues.
Right by the exhibit is a forum room with the photobook of Nona’s project that contains even more photographs. Believe it or not, I find this book to be more effective than the exhibit. There’s truly something about being up close and holding the book to then page through it and see the images in a different way. Here, there are minimal reflections, and you have a more intimate experience. I wish they had put several copies of the book out for viewing within the exhibit instead.
The unfortunate thing about this is that many people who come to the museum might not have an arts background, and so they’d just glance over the book without realizing that this is the penultimate experience that the photographer was heavily involved in.
The images by Nona Faustine exhibited are, at times, too high up and cause reflections that don’t give us the best viewing angle of the otherwise phenomenal prints. I don’t use that word lightly — the print quality is so pristine that you could sit there and be bedazzled by it for an entire afternoon. You can see in my images how people would need to really look up to see the photographs and their average viewing distance. At these angles, you’re bound to get reflections that make it very difficult to take in the work.
Coupled with the beautiful terra cotta wall color, I’d never want to leave. And quite frankly, I don’t think people should leave this room so quickly. They should do multiple tours of the photos. Additionally, you have to shoot a photo of the captions located on the side of the walls and then correspond them to each print. It would’ve been much easier if the captions were located by each print instead.
Despite these complaints, I have to be frank and say that the Brooklyn Museum is succeeding much better at inclusivity in arts than many other institutions are. Here, it doesn’t feel like it’s a corporate adherence to something for marketing reasons. It instead feels incredibly authentic. And most importantly, I truly feel like they do photography justice as an art form. You can see this in the Paul McCartney exhibit and exhibit next to it. In the month of February, Jamel Shabazz was invited to do portraits of people at a party. While they’re not doing what Fotografiska does, they do a much better job than ICP. In a world where photography is struggling to be recognized as an art form, that’s most important.
Nona Faustine: White Shoes is on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and we encourage you to go take a look. The museum also offers online tours, which is a great way to check it out if you’re not in NYC.