This series of photographs were made during a short visit to the East coast of the U.S.A, where I stayed with family in Bridgeport Connecticut and visited N.Y.C intermittently. During one of my pilgrimages to the Harlem based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library I linked up with Isaiah Blake alongside his comrade Saida Blair.
We had an engaging discussion and lunch centred around all things Black Geographies, and we did this within tie site-specific geographies of the Schomburg Center’s small garden space. Paying homage to Harlem’s future, past and present enlivened Black geographies, I’ve long played with the visual motif of or the notion of the ‘rose that are from concrete’. For me it is a metaphor for the livelihoods of young Black people who beautifully live out their days in violent cities and geographies, that would potentially see them cut down in their prime and yet they live one against the odds. Put this visual motif into dialogue with a a portrait of Isiah, who I was honoured to be in discussion with as well as a portrait of the two of use together made by Saida Blair, I present Eastcoast Roses.
