INTERCESSION, a meditation on internal and community tension, is a response to the current war in Gaza. How do we navigate when we begin to question who and what we understand?  The exhibition asks, “is there a way to speak, when both speaking and being silent are equally volatile positions?”  The photographic work of Alonso Nichols, Phillip C. Keith, Sam Williams, and Lauren Miller at New Art Center Trio Corridor Gallery creates discourse through three types of Black artistic practices: chronicling, projecting personhood, and memory of space.

As a genre of art, oftentimes, documenting and chronicling of Black communities are overdetermined by the erasure and indignity caused by the history of enslavement. The inspirational oratory of abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, documented in revolutionary newspapers, began to refute racist assumptions of people of African descent and affirmed expanded worldviews, aesthetic practices, and spiritual beliefs.  To intercede is to remain visible, to declare “we are still here,” and we matter.

For Alonso Nichols, notions of place are deeply personal.

Much of his work is inspired by stories told by relatives or by memories of figures in his grandmother’s photo album. Alonso was particularly drawn to an heirloom holding an image of his third-great grandparents Richard and Emeline Griffin who came out of enslavement in Virginia and settled in Smoketown in Louisville Kentucky. As part of his own migration from the south to the north, to fulfill his mother’s desire for her children to get an education, Nichols pursued literature at UC Irvine before moving to Boston and receiving his MFA in photography from Tufts University.

Alonso’s mixed media work consists of digitally collaged images from multiple blocks in his old neighborhood. Rather than stitching together elements end to end as a moment in time, Nichols chooses to collapse time by selecting images from multiple time periods, metaphors for transformations of physical space or mutations of temporal memory. Fragments of passing cars and aged buildings echo the fragmentation and displacement caused by time and deterioration, urban renewal and gentrification. As houses come down, bricks of former shotgun homes are palleted up for resale.

The piece “500 Black of East Lampton Street'' is a byproduct of the pandemic, when visiting physical space was hampered.  Many of us during that time found ways through digital devices and constant internet searching to remake time and space, to paste it together, to bring the outside within our reach. Nichols was able to use the screen as his viewfinder to reconstruct what he remembered of his youthful community. He reconsidered the idea of the camera altogether and learned to capture the materials he needed in another way. This crisis of circumstance opened a new approach to photographic production.

Why intercede? Why get involved?

Along with architectural images from Smoketown, Nichols has added three portraits. Each is an intimate scene; two of them are shot from an interior hallway capturing a woman, his mother, as she prepares herself for the day. There is a reverence in the close distance. The third image shows mom curled up on the living room couch. The picture contains both sentimental and historical value.  An employee of a local building developer suggested to Alonso’s uncle, “one day there won’t be many Black folks living in Smoketown.” Change is coming. Politics are written on the landscape.

Today, when chronicling community movements like Black Lives Matter, it is important to not only both get the story right, but also to show continuity with post-Civil War and Civil Rights era gains. Advocating for citizens’ rights, denouncing municipal incompetence and corruption, the staging of large-scale cultural celebrations that equally mourn colonial histories – these bear witness to the fact that both tragedy and possibility bubble up from the street. In a country that is only beginning to confront the legacy of dehumanization and trauma within its Indigenous and Black inhabitants, used as trafficked labor to build its early wealth –  projecting personhood is like a drumbeat.

For Sam Williams, bodies are at ease in defiance.

He makes time for his subjects as his subjects make space for him. Whether on the streets of Boston or along the mall in Washington DC, Williams documents moments of resistance, while also holding the social movement it is part of, sacred. The six images selected for this exhibition feature figures in isolated reflection as well as in public spaces. They stand adorned with t-shirts displaying revolutionary slogans, bandana face masks, kerchiefs with stars and stripes, and wrapped scarves to protect against gas attacks.

For Lauren Miller bodies exist flamboyantly and provocatively.

Her portraits feature figures within community, yet otherworldly – richly adorned, proclaiming self-worth and agency. Bathed in red from head to toe, stark blue lips, a figure seems to pass through dimensions. Another, framed by long brown locs, face paint and colorful glyphs on their attire and a halo of gold satellites, reflects. Two elders with raised fists and donning surgical masks stand in solidarity outside a storefront. Another elder is encircled by supporters at a rent control rally, wearing a lime green t-shirt, stating “we shall not be moved.”

For Philip Keith, bodies evaporate in 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Three images in the exhibition are of Rahimah Rahim. She was photographed by Keith for Vanity Fair, a year after George Floyd’s death, in an issue on mothers who lost their sons in police involved shootings. Usaamah Rahim was killed on a street in Boston's Roslindale neighborhood on June 2, 2015. His mother Rahimah continues to challenge ‘qualified immunity’ by the police department in such shootings. Another image by Keith features a man turned away from the camera, his expansive frame covering most of the frame, with the words, “8 MINUTES AND 46 SECONDS” on his back, which is the amount of time George Floyd lay in the street with a police officer’s knee on his neck.

There are also archival photographs from Myrtle Baptist Church, founded in Newton, MA around 1875. The role of the Black church as both a religious institution and physical place of safety is central to the notion of intercession. After enslavement, Black communities were relegated to inferior land, with less resources and opportunities for prosperity and growth. These spaces were often remade into rich communities. Within a larger white world still unsure about its Black neighbors, the centrality of the church and the leaders it nurtured remains profound. Institutions such as Myrtle Baptist Church stood in the gap against societal injustice, but also were places the community could run to for advice and prayer.

The aim of INTERCESSION is to provide an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the lives of their fellow citizens and the spaces we each inhabit, possibly in a new light.

INTERCESSION is part of the Center’s BIPOC Cultural Program which aims to provide opportunities for established and emerging curators to showcase local talent as well as artists in and around greater Boston. newartcenter.org l essay by Reggie Woolery published in ArtScope Magazine Jan / Feb Issue 2024