The Interior Lives of Black Homes
The photos immediately started winning awards, but Ms. Bright found that many white viewers could not get over their own internal stereotypes.
“I was told by a publisher I didn’t have enough signifiers there to show the work was Black,” she said. A consultant told her, “This looks like my house. There is a bookcase, they read, I don’t see any TVs.” On that bookcase, prominently displayed, was Debra J. Dickerson’s manifesto from 2004, “The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Owners.”
Michelle Joan Wilkinson, a curator at the museum, has developed its design…Continue Reading