iMuseum of Contemporary Photography · South Loop / Near South Side
Over 110 artists from the MoCP collection imagine the years Emmett Till never had, developed with his cousin Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. — a creative monument to an unlived life.
In Stephen Marc's 1988 photograph, a father on a Chicago shoreline has just thrown his son into the air, and the boy hangs there between release and catch. Guest curator Sarah Elizabeth Lewis calls it the epigraph for the whole show. Her first question was whether Emmett Till was the boy or the father.
The show imagines the life Till would have had if he'd made it home from Mississippi in 1955. More than 110 photographs from MoCP's own collection run from childhood to adulthood, north to South and back: hopscotch, prom, the Bulls, a portrait of Barack Obama. Train tracks keep returning, for the ride home he never took. The pictures hang without captions, so you meet Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks without being told it's them. Responses come from Ava DuVernay, John Legend and Till's cousin, Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr.
Newcity found it heart-wrenching, though the walls are "humming with life" rather than violence. Entry is free, Thursdays run until 8pm, and it closes 19 December.
Περισσότεροι από 110 καλλιτέχνες από τη συλλογή του MoCP φαντάζονται τα χρόνια που δεν πρόλαβε να ζήσει ο Emmett Till, σε ένα πρότζεκτ που αναπτύχθηκε σε συνεργασία με τον ξάδελφό του, τον αιδεσιμότατο Wheeler Parker Jr.
Stephen Marc's shoreline throw
A Chicago father tosses his son into the air in 1988, the boy suspended mid-flight; Lewis chose it as the epigraph for the exhibition.
Gordon Parks's segregated drinking fountains
A colour photograph from Mobile, Alabama, taken the year after Till's death; Lonnie Bunch reads the subjects' clothes as a refusal of second-class citizenship.
Walter Rosenblum's Hopscotch
Children at play in 1952, chosen by Till's cousin Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., whose whole response is three words: "A time of innocence."
Dawoud Bey's Barack Obama
A 2006 portrait of then-Senator Obama looking straight into the camera, commissioned by Columbia College and chosen by Hank Willis Thomas.
Todd Hido beside Paul D'Amato
A blonde woman's sunlit hair seen from behind, hung next to a young Black boy at a pool's edge in golden-hour light, looking back at you.
You want a label beside every picture: the 110-plus photographs hang uncaptioned.
Δική σας εικόνα; Ζητήστε μας να τη διορθώσουμε ή να την αφαιρέσουμε.