Nona Faustine, a photographer who used her work to focus on the perseverance of Black ladies, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist final yr, confirmed her passing on social media. A reason behind demise was not specified.
ARTnews has reached out to Larger Footage, Faustine’s New York gallery.
In methods each provocative and exquisite, Faustine’s pictures explored situations afflicting Black ladies throughout time. She often photographed herself in ways in which thought-about how her physique acted as a report of histories of exploitation and empowerment.
“The true lives of Black ladies in the US, if not on the planet, should not seen,” she informed the photographer Carla J. Williams final yr in BOMB magazine. “I wished to point out our lives and who we’re. We’re very particular. Not simply due to our struggling however due to our magnificence and energy. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.”
Her most well-known sequence, “White Footwear,” concerned visiting websites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some photos from the sequence, she pictured herself within the nude, carrying only a pair of white pumps, in locations such because the intersection at 74 Wall Road, the place enslaved individuals had been as soon as auctioned.
To create that image, she needed to enlist pals to make sure law enforcement officials wouldn’t discover the bare artist. “Placing myself on the market in the course of the intersection at Wall Road with ongoing site visitors was an enormous threat,” she told Musée, recalling that it was usually under freezing when she disrobed.
Faustine started the “White Footwear” sequence in 2012 and was not but completed with it by the point it was surveyed on the Brooklyn Museum in 2024, in what was billed as her first-ever institutional present. She was impressed to begin it after studying up on Sarah Baartman, a South African Khoikhoi girl who was ogled by Westerners in the course of the nineteenth century as a freak present attraction in Europe.
In that context, the sneakers are wealthy with symbolism. “They signify what Black ladies have been denied publicly and privately,” wrote Pamela Sneed in 4Columns final yr. “Due to racism, misogyny, and extra, what is commonly denied is company. Faustine, in charge of the digicam and the lens, provides reclamation.”
One of many more moderen photos from the sequence, Benevolent spirits, tracing steps free naked toes from this world to the opposite (2021), options simply the pumps themselves, with out Faustine current. Organized across the sneakers are shells and bits of sea glass. “We’re compelled to recall the Black ladies who’ve perished from this earth,” wrote Alana Pockros within the New York Instances. “It’s a long-lasting picture for us to remove, in order that we by no means, ever neglect what transpired in our very personal metropolis.”
Nona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Crown Heights. Images was throughout her. She credited her father and uncle, each of whom had been pictures fanatics, with stoking an curiosity within the medium, and recalled spending time together with her household’s photograph album.
She studied pictures on the College of Visible Arts, graduating in 1997. Initially, she had plans to grow to be a panorama photographer and pursued her ardour as an undergraduate, toting round her area digicam together with her when she visited New York’s parks. However a substantial change had taken place by the point she went again to highschool in 2011, this time on the Worldwide Middle of Images at Bard Faculty.
She had begun to give attention to individuals: “Mitochondria,” a sequence begun in 2008, was a tribute to ladies in her household, with photos of her mom, her sister, and her daughter. “I wished to present my daughter the identical present my father gave me: a visible diary,” she told Lens, the New York Instances’s pictures weblog. “As a single mom, I wished her to see how a lot she was liked.”
Black ladies continued to be the topic of her work. In Say Her Title (2016), Faustine photographed herself mendacity down in her household’s Flatbush residence, posed as if she had been deceased. It was a tribute to Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after being arrested by a state trooper in 2015.
Different works interrogated American historical past extra broadly. One physique of pictures function distinctly American websites—the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and others—which can be pictured behind bars. Doing so leaves these websites partially hidden from public view as a result of Faustine was exploring “how historical past is rotated,” as she as soon as mentioned. “What’s overlooked, what’s included, what are the lies. And, who will get celebrated.”
Faustine had just lately accomplished a fellowship with the American Academy in Rome. In an interview with the American Academy in Rome, she mentioned she had spent her time in Italy “exploring the African presence in historic Rome via landscapes and self-portraits.” Her daughter, Queen, had made the journey to Italy together with her.
“It’s a marvel to see all of present-day Rome—modern, trendy, and historic—peeking beneath the floor in every single place,” she mentioned. “What it might have been and who was there.”
