\n\tNona Faustine<\/a>, a photographer who used her work to highlight the perseverance of Black women, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist last year, confirmed<\/a> her passing on social media. A cause of death was not specified.<\/p>\n \n\tARTnews<\/em> has reached out to Higher Pictures, Faustine\u2019s New York gallery.<\/p>\n \n\tIn ways both provocative and beautiful, Faustine\u2019s photography explored conditions afflicting Black women across time. She frequently photographed herself in ways that considered how her body acted as a record of histories of exploitation and empowerment.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\u201cThe true lives of Black women in the United States, if not in the world, are not seen,\u201d she told the photographer Carla J. Williams last year in BOMB<\/em> magazine<\/a>. \u201cI wanted to show our lives and who we are. We are very special. Not just because of our suffering but because of our beauty and strength. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHer most famous series, \u201cWhite Shoes,\u201d involved visiting sites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some images from the series, she pictured herself in the nude, wearing just a pair of white pumps, in places such as the intersection at 74 Wall Street, where enslaved people were once auctioned. <\/p>\n \n\tTo create that picture, she had to enlist friends to ensure police officers would not notice the naked artist. \u201cPutting myself out there in the middle of the intersection at Wall Street with ongoing traffic was a huge risk,\u201d she told Mus\u00e9e<\/em><\/a>, recalling that it was often below freezing when she disrobed.<\/p>\n \n\tFaustine began the \u201cWhite Shoes\u201d series in 2012 and was not yet finished with it by the time it was surveyed at the Brooklyn Museum in 2024, in what was billed as her first-ever institutional show. She was inspired to start it after reading up on Sarah Baartman, a South African Khoikhoi woman who was ogled by Westerners during the 19th century as a freak show attraction in Europe.<\/p>\n \n\tIn that context, the shoes are rich with symbolism. \u201cThey represent what Black women have been denied publicly and privately,\u201d wrote Pamela Sneed<\/a> in 4Columns<\/em> last year. \u201cBecause of racism, misogyny, and more, what is often denied is agency. Faustine, in control of the camera and the lens, offers reclamation.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the more recent images from the series, Benevolent spirits, tracing steps free bare feet from this world to the other<\/em> (2021), features just the pumps themselves, without Faustine present. Arranged around the shoes are shells and bits of sea glass. \u201cWe are compelled to recall the Black women who have perished from this earth,\u201d wrote Alana Pockros<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a lasting image for us to take away, so that we never, ever forget what transpired in our very own city.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Crown Heights. Photography was all around her. She credited her father and uncle, both of whom were photography enthusiasts, with stoking an interest in the medium, and recalled spending time with her family\u2019s photo album.<\/p>\n \n\tShe studied photography at the School of Visual Arts, graduating in 1997. Initially, she had plans to become a landscape photographer and pursued her passion as an undergraduate, toting around her field camera with her when she visited New York\u2019s parks. But a considerable change had taken place by the time she went back to school in 2011, this time at the International Center of Photography at Bard College. <\/p>\n \n\tShe had begun to focus on people: \u201cMitochondria,\u201d a series begun in 2008, was a tribute to women in her family, with images of her mother, her sister, and her daughter. \u201cI wanted to give my daughter the same gift my father gave me: a visual diary,\u201d she told Lens<\/em><\/a>, the New York Times<\/em>\u2019s photography blog. \u201cAs a single mother, I wanted her to see how much she was loved.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBlack women continued to be the subject of her work. In Say Her Name<\/em> (2016), Faustine photographed herself lying down in her family\u2019s Flatbush apartment, posed as though she were deceased. It was a tribute to Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after being arrested by a state trooper in 2015.<\/p>\n \n\tOther works interrogated American history more broadly. One body of photographs feature distinctly American sites\u2014the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and others\u2014that are pictured behind bars. Doing so leaves these sites partially hidden from public view because Faustine was exploring \u201chow history is turned around,\u201d as she once said. \u201cWhat is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And, who gets celebrated.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFaustine had recently completed a fellowship with the American Academy in Rome. In an interview with the American Academy in Rome, she said she had spent her time in Italy \u201cexploring the African presence in ancient Rome through landscapes and self-portraits.\u201d Her daughter, Queen, had made the trip to Italy with her.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt is a wonder to see all of present-day Rome\u2014contemporary, modern, and ancient\u2014peeking underneath the surface everywhere,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat it could have been and who was there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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