Black Florida: Pompano Beach by artist Johanne Rahaman
The exhibit will be open starting February 16 from 6 to 9 p.m. the Bailey Contemporary Arts gallery
Johanne Rahaman is an emerging documentary photographer, working in both digital and film formats since 2002. Her latest work, Black Florida, has been profiled in New Yorker magazine. The collection is an ongoing photographic archive of shifting urban and rural spaces occupied by the Black communities throughout the State of Florida.
Rahaman’s images consists of environmental portraits, landscape, architectural and still life images, underscoring the urgency and importance of recording these neighborhoods that are in a constant state of flux.
In February, 2017, BaCA will exhibit the images as a result of her focus on Pompano Beach in honor of Black History month, and as a continuing narrative that began with last year’s exhibit, “What’s Your Story?” that showcased portraits of Pompano Beach’s black community in the 1930s.
Rahaman’s drive for documenting these communities that mirror her hometown; the stigmatized Laventille Hills of Trinidad, was born out of a sense of duty to offer the public an alternative view of Black ghettos, and ghetto life, unashamedly, as a sense of place, as home.
In the absence of newsworthy events, her work takes a look at the simplicities and the complexities of entrepreneurship, beauty, sensuality, aging, mortality, youth, and resilience within the African Diaspora.
“Black Florida” is supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP), an organization who aims to change the national conversation around both poverty and economic insecurity. They commission stories – from narrative features to photo essays and video – that put a human face on financial instability. They fund and place their reportage and photojournalism in renowned and popular sites and magazines, from The New York Times to Slate to MSNBC.
