DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Inglewood,” 2019 (digital pigment print, 20 x 25 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
AN ENDLESS EXPANSE of dark, open waters illustrates the cover of The New York Times Magazine’s groundbreaking examination of the legacy of slavery in America: The 1619 Project. The black-and-white photograph captures the distant horizon near a Hampton, Va., coastal port where a ship appeared 400 years ago carrying the first enslaved Africans (“twenty and odd Negroes”) brought to what would become America.
The photograph is by Dannielle Bowman. Inside the magazine, the special coverage published in August 2019, concludes with another image by Bowman. She documents a Savannah, Ga., location where 436 enslaved people were sold. The 1859 event was the largest auction of enslaved people in American history.
Bowman landed the high-profile Times commission one year after earning an MFA from Yale (2018). The 1619 Project is about reframing the American narrative by centering the consequences and outcomes of slavery and the contributions and experiences of black people.
The goals of the ambitious project parallel the focus of Bowman’s photography practice. Her work “investigates the histories of people left out of the grand historical narratives with which we are more familiar.”
Dannielle Bowman’s work “investigates the histories of people left out of the grand historical narratives with which we are more familiar.”
Bowman lives and works in New York. For her latest exhibition, a solo show at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, she returned to the Los Angeles neighborhoods where she grew up (Baldwin Hills, Inglewood, and Crenshaw).
In “What Had Happened,” Bowman employs light and shadow as framing devices. Her black-and-white images read as abstract compositions and still lifes—even when her subjects are women. Exploring “themes of displacement, family history, and notions of home,” she is “opening her own history to ask questions about the role location and landscape play in personal evolution.” CT
“Dannielle Bowman: What Had Happened” is on view at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, Jan. 7-Feb. 1, 2020
FIND MORE about Dannielle Bowman on her website
Installation view of “Dannielle Bowman: What Had Happened,” Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York (Jan. 7-Feb. 1, 2020). | Photo courtesy Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Bust,” 2019 (digital pigment print, 16 x 20 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Untitled,” 2019 (digital pigment print, 24 x 30 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, From “Untitled Diptych (Crack),” 2019 (digital pigment print, 20 x 25 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
Installation view of “Dannielle Bowman: What Had Happened,” Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York (Jan. 7-Feb. 1, 2020). Shown, “Untitled Diptych (Crack),” 2019 (digital pigment print, 20 x 25 inches). | Photo courtesy Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Vision (Bump’N’Curl),” 2019 (digital pigment print, 32 x 40 inches | © Dannielle Bowman
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Untitled,” 2019 (digital pigment print, 16 x 20 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
DANNIELLE BOWMAN, “Sap,” 2019 (digital pigment print, 24 x 30 inches). | © Dannielle Bowman
1 comment
Brenda Dixon-Gottschild says:
Jan 31, 2020
I feel blessed to have been introduced to Culture Type by a visual artist friend. These articles are enlightening, inspiring, and have opened my eyes to a whole area of “invisibilized” African American history. Thank you, Victoria Valentine!