Gray, misty, fall-into-winter NYC, near Columbus Circle. Sometimes the city gets on my nerves, but there are always moments of surprising beauty and amazement… still. (Photo by Mr. Marlynn via BlackBerry)
Esperanza Spalding rocks the cover of the fashion issue of T, the New York Times Magazine fall supplement! Nice-ty!!
Wendy Phillips, “La Limpia Series #10,” 2006
Wendy Phillips’ conceptual work is informed…by the ethnographic research project she has been doing with women of African and North American indigenous descent in the communities of the coastal states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, Mexico.
La Limpia Project was inspired by what she learned about Afromestizo women’s conceptualization of illness and their rituals related to healing. In this series, her body is the location of the rituals, and her photographs include the ritual objects and symbols the women use in their traditional practices.
Phillips writes,
This work is based in my search for the beliefs, philosophies, and healing practices that may have been those of my ancestors. Written records of world history, as well as the oral histories of my ancestors inform me of my West African and Native American (Iroquois) heritage. Unfortunately, the cultural and political climate in which my great-grandmothers lived did not encourage or permit the holding on to, practice, or expression of their traditional West African and North American indigenous beliefs and healing practices and all but a few nuances of these were lost to me…
Thinking about what the Mexican women taught me, I made portraits of myself together with the objects and materials that are components of their traditional African-indigenous rituals. My body gestures refer to ways of positioning the body that confer meaning according to Kongo spiritual and cultural systems. In the Kongo culture bodily gestures represent those personal characteristics that are valued. These gestures are often seen in Kongo sculptural art…
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Portrait of Duanna Johnson (1968-2008), by Mark Weber
One of the stories in the book [Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States] that I think is particularly powerful is that of Duanna Johnson, a Black transgender woman who was arrested for a prostitution-related offense in Memphis, Tennessee, whose brutal beating by a police officer in the local jail was caught on videotape, and whose murder less than a year later, the third in as many years of a Black transgender woman in Memphis, remains unsolved.
The reason it is so compelling is because it raises so many central themes – the grinding discrimination transgender people face in virtually every aspect of life - employment, housing, access to drug treatment, homeless shelters, and other supportive services - the pervasive profiling and policing of transgender people, and particularly transgender women of color, as being engaged in sex-related offenses, the viciousness and impunity of police violence against LGBT people of color, and the endemic violence and lack of police protection LGBT people of color face in our communities.
It also highlights the relative invisibility of these experiences – Johnson’s case, despite the existence of a “smoking gun” video of the police beating, did not garner national attention or generate widespread outrage among mainstream racial justice, anti-police brutality, and civil rights organizations as Rodney King’s did. Her murder did not draw the nationwide calls for justice Matthew Shepard’s did. Local organizers’ valiant and thoughtful efforts to do justice by her experiences and her memory went largely unsupported by national organizations of all stripes beyond a sound bite here and there, usually in service of their larger agenda of advancing “hate crimes” laws – which have done nothing to protect Johnson from either form of “hate violence” she experienced. And ultimately, while the officer who beat her was ultimately prosecuted under federal civil rights laws, Johnson was not able to achieve justice through the legal system in her lifetime for the multiple forms of violence and criminalization she endured.
Duanna bravely confronted the Memphis Police Department officers who brutalized her while she was in police custody. At great personal cost, Duanna was the public face of our community’s campaign against racism, homophobia, and transphobia. There was no justice for Duanna Johnson in life.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lorwctzoTE1qjeot1o1_500.jpg)
LOOOOOVVVVEEEE!!! What a beauty… what a clavicle!!! ;-)
i-D Magazine profiles 16 year old model on the rise Nyasha Matonhodze, the faces of Louis Vuitton Fall 2011 and Topshop Fall 2011.
Bob Marley’s Italian Rolling Stone Cover
Rolling Stone Italy celebrates the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s passing with a tribute cover
(Source: funkadelicsoul)
