ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2021, From Tulsa to Minneapolis: Documenting the Long Road to Justice

ZEKEFALL 2021 VOL.7/NO.2 $15 US
THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY
FEATURED ARTICLES
AWAKE IN THE DESERT LAND
Photographs by Sofia Aldinio
PATH AWAY
Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso
FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS
Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting
this extraordinary time in American history
THE EMPTYING OF THE ANDES
Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto
Published by Social Documentary ZEKE FALL Network 2021/ 1

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS
Photo by Joshua Rashaad
McFadden
After the last speech at the
Commitment March Rally on
August 28, 2020, thousands
of people flooded the streets of
Washington, D.C., to protest
police brutality in America.
2 / ZEKE FALL 2021

PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 3

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
Several consistent themes arise across
the thousands of images documenting
the last year of racial justice
protests in the United States— the
raised Black power fist; a surge of
civilian bodies facing off against
a line of stony-faced police forces; eyes
raised to the camera in triumphant challenge
of the powers that be. Each of these
poignant moments draw from long histories
of photography on the American struggle
for justice within a country whose deeply
embedded racism spans centuries built of
settler colonization and the enslavement of
Black people.
An especially horrific part of that long
history of racial terror and subjugation in
America is the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre
of Black residents by a white mob.
While many Black Americans have long
held the memory of that deadly night and
the several preceding years of white mob
violence that erupted across the nation,
few photographs exist to bear ongoing
witness to the death and destruction. In the
decades since, however, Black Americans
have utilized the camera’s evidentiary
power as a tool in the twin struggles to
humanize Black lives and depict racial
injustice. The evisceration of Tulsa’s prosperous
Black community and the 2020
racial justice protests that represent the
largest social justice movement in U.S.
history are separated by nearly 100 years,
serving as troubling markers of how little
progress has been made on this long road
to justice. Yet, the influx of visual storytelling
by those whose lives are held in the
balance and social media’s access to a
rapt global audience offers new hope that
justice might yet be realized.
Since Black Lives Matter’s 2013 beginnings
as a hashtag following the 2013
shooting death of Black teenager Trayvon
Martin, the movement gained steam as
both a social media campaign and a
series of national protests in the wake of
each Black person killed by police brutality.
It’s vital to understand how much this
movement (and many other contemporary
social justice efforts) owes to the wide
circulation of visual evidence online. While
such egregious acts of racial violence and
police brutality have been rampant since
the advent of American policing, it is the
increasing presence of digital cameras that
have ushered in an era where racism can
be documented and therefore demand further
reckoning. As BLM builds on the visual
rhetoric of Civil Rights Movement photography,
the relationship between street-level
activism and the power of the camera is
increasingly revealed.
The collection of 23 photographs on
these pages is drawn from over 500
images submitted by photographers who
answered the call to share their visual
interpretations of the Long Road to Justice.
Importantly, the work is primarily made
by Black photographers whose lived
experiences of racial injustice and respect
for Black lives is tangibly felt across the
photo essay. From Brian Branch-Prices’s
intimate look at Black musicians to Kenechi
Unachukwu’s We Still Here, a picture of
Black resilience emerges. Donald Black
Jr.’s loving ode to Black childhood symbolizes
exactly what we fight for: a future
where the threat of police brutality against
our children, our mothers, our fathers and
brothers is a thing of the past.
The work to realize that future, however,
is far from over. Even as these images of
Black life compel the world to recognize
the shared humanity of all people, there
remains a stark disconnect between the
realities visualized by our photography
and the widespread realization of social,
political, and economic reform. The
struggle for racial justice continues and we
lift our cameras as we steady our resolve,
ready to meet the call wielding our choice
of weapons.
—Tara Pixley
Program Credits
Chair:
Lisa DuBois
Jurors:
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Lisa DuBois
Anthony Barboza
Eli Reed
Jamel Shabazz
4 / ZEKE FALL 2021

Best-of-Show Award
Donald Black Jr.
A Day No One Will Remember
A collection of images created by Donald
Black Jr. over the past 10 years. After returning
home to Cleveland, Ohio, he started creating
images that only an insider could see
and began making images that represented
his perception of his reality. Seeing himself
and where he came from has influenced
an obsession to photograph children in his
community.
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 5

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
Above
Photographer: Titus Brooks Heagins
Exhibit Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends
This project represents a visual dialog
that interrogates the lives of those who
live in the margins of society.
Caption: Brittany and Brianna
Right top
Photographer: Brian Branch-Price
Exhibit Title: Rhythm and Praise, an
Epic Journey
This project reflects the expressions,
thoughts and actions of a people, of a
culture and of a folk who love to sing,
dance, shout, give, teach, preach, cut a
step all in the name of gospel music.
Caption: Percy Bady, Newark, New
Jersey
Right below
Photographer: Teanna Woods Okojie
Exhibit Title: Black Boy Joy
Black Boy Joy is a series of multiple
images spanning from 2013 to 2021
depicting young African youth and
young men in various environments
experiencing pure joy.
6 / ZEKE FALL 2021

Above
Photographer: Brian Branch-Price
Exhibit Title: BLM: The Third
Expressing the frustrations of an oppressed
community reacting to social injustices, economic
apartheid, Jim Crow, over-policing,
lynching, inhumanity, during peaceful and
confrontational protest in New York, New
Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, and D.C.
Caption: Livia Rose Johnson, 20, march
organizer during a Justice for George Floyd
protest and rally in New York on June 4, 2020
Left
Photographer: Raymond W. Holman, Jr.
Exhibit Title: COVID-19 in Black America
Environmental portraits of Black and brown
skin people with first-hand experience of
COVID-19 – having recovered, lost family
members, been mentally challenged by
social isolation, and figuring out how to
adjust and make a new pathway.
Caption: A Princeton University student
experiencing a year of online classes and
isolation due to COVID-19, but becoming a
stronger human being through this challenge.
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 7

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
Above
Photographer: Lisa DuBois
Exhibit Title: MAAFA: The Great African
Tragedy
A term meaning “Great Disaster” in Swahili,
MAAFA ceremonies honoring ancestors
became part of African-American culture
at the onset of slavery — the African
Holocaust — and continue today, honoring
the generations that lived and died as slaves
and bringing catharsis.
Caption: A woman prepares for a ritual
using a bell. It is believed ancestors can hear
this sound.
Right
Photographer: Imari DuSauzay
Exhibit Title: We the People
Started by Joe of Saint James Joy, these
Block Party sessions in the heart of Brooklyn’s
Clinton Hill celebrated the community
without separations, embracing all who came
to share their joy in collective dance free
from imposed constructs of social stress and
all “isms,” healing through a collective of We
The People.
Caption: FLIGHT
8 / ZEKE FALL 2021

Left
Photographer: Cheryle Galloway
Exhibit Title: Out of Many?
Photographing as an archaeologist
discovering things left behind by a lost
civilization, removing social constructs
used as tools to divide us in the hope to
breakdown all walls to mutuality, Out of
Many? asks, how does America heal to
become one nation?
Caption: “How much time do you want
for your ‘progress’”? James Baldwin. The
White House, Washington, D.C.
Lower Left
Photographer: LeRoy W. Henderson
Exhibit Title: Expressions Against Racism
and Oppression in America
These photographs represent growing
public expression against racial injustice
and oppression in America. People of all
ages are beginning to become more vocal.
Significantly, young people in growing
numbers are taking the leadership in this
movement for change.
Above
Photographer: Collette Fournier
Exhibit Title: Taking the Struggle to the
Streets—Black Lives Always Mattered
After learning my people were once slaves
as a youngster, I have been on a visual
journey to document my people in the
Diaspora. Working on a series enables me
to revisit and expand upon my ideas, knowing
that the story rarely ends.
Caption: Suffern, NY; Die-In for Kimani
Gray, 2013. Willie Trotman, President of
NAACP Spring Valley, Community activist
Ken Mercer and the student community at
a Die-In protest in Rockland County, NY.
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 9

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
Above
Photographer: Shoun Hill
Exhibit Title: Protests 2020
These are photographs from 2020 of the protests
surrounding the murders of unarmed African-
Americans by police officers in the USA.
Caption: A participant holds a sign during a vigil and
coming together for George Floyd, Sunday, May 31,
2020, in Inwood Park in Manhattan.
Right
Photographer: Kevin Bernard Jones
Exhibit Title: March on Washington 2020—A
People’s Perspective
The 2020 March on Washington for racial justice and
police reform organized by Reverend Al Sharpton and
the National Action Network after the public murder
of George Floyd just months before by a Minneapolis
police officer. Held fifty-seven years after Martin
Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream.”
Bottom
Photographer: Khary Mason
Exhibit Title: It is a Difficult Time to Convict a Hero
In this series, Mason explores media’s influence upon
society’s perceptions of law enforcement, and the
silence vs. duty of Black officers in America.
Caption: Chasing freedom...
10 / ZEKE FALL 2021

Left
Photographer: Deja Nycole
Exhibit Title: Black & Dangerous
A collaborative project utilizing poetry,
portraiture, and reportage to redefine the
way Black people are perceived because of
stereotypes.
Caption: Ed Ross, 21, Accokeek, Maryland
Above
Photographer: Thaddeus Miles
Exhibit Title: It Took Me to My Knees!
Caption: Tired & Ready
Top:
Photographer: Burroughs Lamar
Exhibit Title: National Action Network
(NAN) March on Washington
Rev. Al Sharpton’s NAN organization
brought together masses of people of
varying ethnicities in a peaceful march that
included a speech by Martin Luther King
Jr.’s son MLK,III, leaving a spirit of hopefulness
that the tragic deaths and injustices
afflicting Africans Americans for centuries
will cease the need for future marches.
Caption: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.
Washington, D.C.
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 11

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE
12 / ZEKE FALL 2021
Top
Photographer: Tara Pixley
Exhibit Title: Our Streets
Taken across multiple 2020 protests
in Los Angeles, these photos speak to
the true spirit of the Black Lives Matter
movement: peaceful showings of solidarity,
community action, and expressions of
democratic public assembly in the face of
COVID-19 and racism’s twin pandemics.
Caption: People stared with open admiration
at a Black man on horseback who
rode in circles carrying the Pan-African
flag.
Above
Photographer: Kenechi Unachukwu
Exhibit Title: We Still Here
People from all ages and ethnicities led by
young Black men and women congregated
at the capitol to voice their frustrations
about a system that has led to the wrongful
death of many Black citizens at the
hands of the police.
Right
Photographer: Michael Young
Exhibit Title: When Will it be Enough.
2020—A Year of Resistance
Caption: Black Issues 1619 -2019. Image
taken at the Black Lives Matter Harlem
Street Mural which had been vandalized
and is under repair.

Top
Photographer: Sheila Pree
Bright
Exhibit Title: #1960Now: Jim
Crow 2.0
Growing up in the Jim Crow
era, my parents never spoke of
their experiences until Trayvon
Martin’s death by police brutality.
My mother said, “I didn’t
want you to hate white people. I
can’t believe I would see the day
that Black people’s oppression
still exists.”
Caption: Statue of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. by Jamaican-born
Basil Watson installed in 2021,
Atlanta, GA.
Lower Left
Photographer: Eva Woolridge
Exhibit Title: We are Not Free
Until We are All Free
An exhibition that discusses
the relationship between all
marginalized groups who are in
the fight to live freely as they
are, with images from marches
for Black Lives, Palestine, and
Black Trans Lives. Because we
all matter.
Caption: True Patriot.
Above
Photographer: Reece T.
Williams
Exhibit Title: On the
Anniversary of My Profound
Confusion
My earnest attempt to not only
chronicle the 2020 marches
for Black lives and living, but
to understand how and why
this moment, out of all the
moments, was chosen as “a
reckoning,” and how only now?
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 13

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Contents of Fall 2021 Issue
Awake in the Desert Land
Photographs by Sofia Aldinio
Path Away
Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso
From Tulsa to Minneapolis: Photographing the
Long Road to Justice
Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting this
extraordinary time in American history
The Emptying of the Andes
Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto
Migration from the Northern Triangle
by Daniela Cohen
Interview with Joseph Rodriguez
by Caterina Clerici
Photography & Social Change
by Emily Schiffer
Book Reviews
Edited by Michelle Bogre