Eight Artists Address Brown v. Board of Education

Social Studies: Eight Artists Address Brown v. Board of Education

I ignore the first room, there is an African American, I assume a student, listening to his c.d. player and taking notes of the first few photographs. I am overwhelmed by this illuminating neon glow, and continue into the next room. I find that I am alone, for the most part, but I am being watched. Literally by a security camera in the southeast corner, but mostly by the oversized photographs and paintings. I feel uncomfortable and I almost want to leave, but there’s a paper that I need to write and I want to revisit some things.

Something catches my eye on the northeast wall and I am reintroduced to 3 chromogenic prints from Carrie Mae Weems’s “For Roses, for Daisy,” from Days Long Forgotten. The first and last are a close aerial view of roses. I can’t tell what color they are because the photos are in black and white, but they’re still beautiful. The middle picture is somewhat larger; there are two African American children. They’re sharing a tight space, but seem to be comfortable with each other. I ask myself why Weems used black and white film, and the only thing I can think of is that the roses, no matter what their colors, are beautiful. And the children are human, which is a beauty in itself. I come to the conclusion that there isn’t a certain race that is more beautiful than another. I am white, and that is beautiful. I have friends from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, and they are beautiful as well. I decide not to read any of the author’s bios or explanations in the brochure I picked up until the end. I guess I’m afraid of judging the works before I even take a chance to look into them myself. In time a read that “For Rosa, for Daisy,” “forgoes the imagery of struggle in favor of a pastoral iconography of flowers and children… [The photos] offer an idyllic world of private beauty and repose that contrasts with the public record of strife and oppression” (O’Brien, 5). In her series “May Days Forgotten” she photographs the girls inside of nature, sometimes in floral prints. I find that her ideas to combine the aspects of natural beauty, from the girls to the flowers and to nature, are breathtaking.