Source: NY Times

There’s nothing particularly striking about seeing ordinary photos of a bunch of white people. It’s something we see all the time, frankly, but when those pictures are a part of a 50-portrait exhibit created by a black photographer, it tells you there’s something more to it.

Those are just the basics of New Yorker Myra Greene’s new project, “My White Friends.” In an interview with the New York Times, the photographer explained that with these photos she’s attempting to force people—particularly white people— to see more than just that in the images.

“I’m always thinking about race,” she said. “I recognize it when I’m the only black person in a room. My white friends will notice I’m the only black person, too. But they don’t notice a room full of white people.”

She’s hoping that they’ll notice now because Myra didn’t just take photos of her friends, the entire process opened up a dialogue on whiteness and class, gender, ethnicity, and even religion between her and her subjects.

“It was the first time many people had been asked to do something for their racial identity, even though I’m asked all the time,” she said. “Do they ever recognize they are the norm?”

That’s an incredible question to ask and an answer that’s been pretty clear to Myra since she debuted her post-Katrina exhibit, “Character Recognition,” which featured a series of black-glass ambrotypes, made up of glistening close-ups of her facial features. She had been disturbed by how black residents were left to fend for themselves during the storm and wanted to explore how do people look at blacks and recognize their character. One of her white friends admitted that the exhibit challenged him.

“He told me ‘It’s a weird thing as a white guy not knowing how to think about this stuff. Am I fetishizing it?’”

“I asked him if he thought about whiteness, and he said no. That’s when I decided to do a project on photography and whiteness.”

Myra is now hoping to turn the portraits into a book to keep the discussion going, especially since she’s often not able to show all 50 portraits at one time.

“My fear is that people will only see them as portraits and not as this bigger conversation because people won’t want to look at the whiteness. It’s not until you hear the title ‘My White Friends’ that the conversation begins.”

Take a look at more photos from Myra’s exhibit here. What do you think about this idea?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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“Her Words Her Word as Witness: Portraits of Women Writers of the African Diaspora” is a new exhibit created by photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn to “pay homage” to some of the writers who she says fed her with their words. “I wanted to thank them for offering so much of themselves. I wanted to share their image with the world,” Barrayn told Loop21.

On display until March 31 at the Skylight Gallery of the Center for Arts & Culture in Brooklyn, are portraits of 36 contemporary writers, like Kierna Mayo, poet Sonia Sanchez, and novelist Edwidge Danticat. Barrayn says she took more than 400 shots to make sure her images were the perfect combination of photojournalism and portraiture.

“Writers are represented by their words, and rarely do we know how they look. We could walk past out favorite writer in the store and not know it. I wanted to focus on women writers because I found their stories and plights to be so intriguing.” she says. “Honestly, this project is deeply personal, most of the writers I chose are writers whose work I really love and admire, they’ve touched my life, validated me, educated me and I’m impressed by their brilliance and fearlessness.”

Check out a sampling of the photos and the rest of Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s interview on Loop21.

What do you think of Barrayn’s exhibit? Are you familiar with the work of the writers in her portraits?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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