Here are Doris Derby’s works, which chronicled civil rights movements in the 1960s. They often focused on women and children. Fanta Diop (teenager) and Dashara McDaniel (teenager) took photos of Black Lives Matter protesters in Chicago and Bronx.
Looking at the work of the youngest artists in the show, Roberts was struck both by what hadn’t changed for Black girls — including the continuing need to fight for their rights — but also, at moments, what has. She stopped at a particularly effective pairing: A 1990 photo by Carrie Mae Weems, in which a young girl carefully replicates the mother’s gesture of putting on lipstick in a mirror, and “Make Up Time,” a video selfie made by Seneca Steplight-Tillet, the curator’s niece, on her eighth birthday.
“Look at the way this young girl puts on makeup and poses for the camera,” Roberts said. “You can sense that she accepts her own beauty and can communicate it, thanks to new technologies. It’s the same message as Weems’s photo, but it’s told through a different lens.”
After spending a day reflecting on the creativity and achievements of Black girls, I asked Roberts about her hopes and dreams for children today. “I want the same thing for Black girls that white girls receive,” she said. “This sense of innocence and joy and playfulness, of being silly and immature and not being punished for it, knowing that their hair grows toward God and it is both beautiful and challenging. I want Black girls to know, just because they appear mighty doesn’t mean they can’t be vulnerable. I want Black girls to be treated as children, not adults.”
Black Dolls
February 25-June 5, New-York Historical Society 170 Central Park West, (212-873-3400, nyhistory.org).
Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments Of Possibility
Express Newark, 54 Halsey Street Newark, N.J., expressnewark.org.
Source: NY Times