Nona Faustine, a photographer who used her work to spotlight the perseverance of Black girls, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the artist final 12 months, confirmed her passing on social media. A reason behind demise was not specified.
ARTnews has reached out to Larger Photos, Faustine’s New York gallery.
In methods each provocative and delightful, Faustine’s images explored circumstances afflicting Black girls throughout time. She ceaselessly photographed herself in ways in which thought-about how her physique acted as a document of histories of exploitation and empowerment.
“The true lives of Black girls in the USA, if not on this planet, will not be seen,” she advised the photographer Carla J. Williams final 12 months in BOMB magazine. “I wished to point out our lives and who we’re. We’re very particular. Not simply due to our struggling however due to our magnificence and energy. The reinvention and the creativity that oozes out. The bravery.”
Her most well-known collection, “White Sneakers,” concerned visiting websites in New York that had ties to histories of enslavement. In some photos from the collection, she pictured herself within the nude, sporting only a pair of white pumps, in locations such because the intersection at 74 Wall Avenue, the place enslaved folks have been as soon as auctioned.
To create that image, she needed to enlist mates to make sure cops wouldn’t discover the bare artist. “Placing myself on the market in the midst of the intersection at Wall Avenue with ongoing visitors was an enormous danger,” she told Musée, recalling that it was usually beneath freezing when she disrobed.
Faustine started the “White Sneakers” collection in 2012 and was not but completed with it by the point it was surveyed on the Brooklyn Museum in 2024, in what was billed as her first-ever institutional present. She was impressed to start out it after studying up on Sarah Baartman, a South African Khoikhoi lady who was ogled by Westerners in the course of the nineteenth century as a freak present attraction in Europe.
In that context, the footwear are wealthy with symbolism. “They signify what Black girls have been denied publicly and privately,” wrote Pamela Sneed in 4Columns final 12 months. “Due to racism, misogyny, and extra, what is usually denied is company. Faustine, accountable for the digital camera and the lens, affords reclamation.”
One of many newer photos from the collection, Benevolent spirits, tracing steps free naked toes from this world to the opposite (2021), options simply the pumps themselves, with out Faustine current. Organized across the footwear are shells and bits of sea glass. “We’re compelled to recall the Black girls who’ve perished from this earth,” wrote Alana Pockros within the New York Instances. “It’s a long-lasting picture for us to remove, in order that we by no means, ever neglect what transpired in our very personal metropolis.”
Nona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Crown Heights. Images was throughout her. She credited her father and uncle, each of whom have been images fans, with stoking an curiosity within the medium, and recalled spending time together with her household’s picture album.
She studied images on the College of Visible Arts, graduating in 1997. Initially, she had plans to develop into a panorama photographer and pursued her ardour as an undergraduate, toting round her area digital camera together with her when she visited New York’s parks. However a substantial change had taken place by the point she went again to high school in 2011, this time on the Worldwide Middle of Images at Bard Faculty.
She had begun to concentrate on folks: “Mitochondria,” a collection begun in 2008, was a tribute to girls in her household, with photos of her mom, her sister, and her daughter. “I wished to present my daughter the identical present my father gave me: a visible diary,” she told Lens, the New York Instances’s images weblog. “As a single mom, I wished her to see how a lot she was beloved.”
Black girls continued to be the topic of her work. In Say Her Identify (2016), Faustine photographed herself mendacity down in her household’s Flatbush condo, posed as if she have been deceased. It was a tribute to Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after being arrested by a state trooper in 2015.
Different works interrogated American historical past extra broadly. One physique of images function distinctly American websites—the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and others—which might be pictured behind bars. Doing so leaves these websites partially hidden from public view as a result of Faustine was exploring “how historical past is circled,” as she as soon as stated. “What’s unnoticed, what’s included, what are the lies. And, who will get celebrated.”
Faustine had not too long ago accomplished a fellowship with the American Academy in Rome. In an interview with the American Academy in Rome, she stated she had spent her time in Italy “exploring the African presence in historical Rome by landscapes and self-portraits.” Her daughter, Queen, had made the journey to Italy together with her.
“It’s a surprise to see all of present-day Rome—up to date, trendy, and historical—peeking beneath the floor all over the place,” she stated. “What it may have been and who was there.”
