Splendor: Unfolding Process
Splendor: The Rose of Sharon, 2021
Splendor is a self-portrait photographic series which explores the restorative relationship between the Black women and the landscape. The series began during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement as an expression of my yearning to see images of a Black body at home on the earth. Imbued with a sense of magic and mysticism, Splendor re-envisions the historically violent relationship between blackness and the land as one dripping in romance, sensuality, and the spiritual introspection of solitude. Splendor supplants brutality with tenderness to beacon the viewer beyond a singular narrative of trauma and into a life-affirming world where healing is possible.
Below, I share some insight on the way the images for this project were created.
Splendor was created at a meditation center located in the small rural town of Springwater, NY. Over the course of 18 months, I photographed myself in numerous locations across the meditation center’s property including a pond, a creek, wooded areas, grass fields, and a waterfall. The constraints imposed by the pandemic—limited access to equipment and zero access to crew—created a work process which was highly solitary and improvisational.
As I was developing the project, I hiked the over 200 acre property daily to scout locations, track the movement of light, and make provisional landscape photographs.
After developing a sense of the way light moved through the day at each of my chosen locations, I returned to them at specific times with my camera gear, hand-sewn costumes, and curated props. I used sticks, ladders, and rocks as stand-ins for myself to frame each image.
Once the images were framed, I stepped in with my costumes and props, and used an intervalometer to shoot continuously while I performed a variety of gestural choreographed movements for the camera.
Through this process, I created over 8,000 images which were edited down into a series for a multimedia solo exhibition and a forthcoming book publication.
While the act of photographing myself became an affirmation of my own vitality and humanity, the series is meant not only to be a reflection of my own personal healing, but to be an invitation to black women to enter themselves through nature, and in that rewilding to claim their right to flourish in dignity, beauty, and joy.