America Seen Through Stars and Stripes (New York), 1976
What if we spent as much time listening to photographs as we do looking at them? Scholars like Fred Moten and Tina M. Campt have suggested that when looking at images of African Americans, often historically silenced, opening our senses to their “sound” might recover their lost histories and activate new ways of engaging with the world. This seems perfect for thinking about the photographer Ming Smith, who was featured in the recent Kamoinge exhibition at the Whitney Museum. “Evidence,” a gallery-size survey of 50 years of Smith’s work, is the inaugural show at Nicola Vassell.
