Figure as Index

Luther Konadu

Nov 6 – Dec 8, 2018

My photo work is one continuous documentary project that centers on the way objective visual documentation ostensibly formulates public perception that surrounds collective identities and historic record specifically as it relates to the black body. Historically, the depiction of the black body in photographic images have either been from an anthropological view, sensationalized, portrayed with the body in a compromising position or completely omitted.

See exhibition booklet here.

Luther Konadu Biography:

As an image maker, I am interested in creating images that contest this tired and prevailing dehumanizing narrative that has long been associated with the black body. I am interested in working around the legacies of documentary photography as a way to create an alternate past in order to imagine a different future of self— as it relates to a social communal context. The resulting fragment images highlight my close community of family of friends in my personal studio as we intimately create a document of self on our own terms. I use diptychs, polyptychs, text, and re-photography all as strategies to suggest an ellipsis to the photo but also to implicate viewers to slow read, and consider photographs as a breakaway from a reality as opposed to a representation of it.