#Hank Willis Thomas

[yearningforunity]

Kama Mama, Kama Binti (Like Mother, Like Daughter) 1971

Hank Willis Thomas

[joeinct]

Seeker, Photo by Hank Willis Thomas, 2012

[soovermyself]

Art Production Fund Gala part 3

[elleinvd]

“All Power to All People.” Art installation by Hank Willis Thomas at Burning Man 2018. Photo by Christine B.

[topcat77]

Hank Willis Thomas

[brooklynmuseum]

Smitten! ❤️🤗

Absolutely smitten with Hank Willis Thomas’s “And They Called It ‘Buppy Love.’” 

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! 

📷 Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1976). And They Called It "Buppy Love" 1983/2007, 1983/2007. Digital print, 36 x 27 3/4 in. (91.4 x 70.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Mary Smith Dorward Fund and gift of Robert Smith, by exchange, 2010.18.16. © artist or artist's estate

[guy60660]

© Hank Willis Thomas | Financial Times

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Ph Hank Willis Thomas, Jungle Fever, 1987

[citastar]

[distractivity]

Hank Willis Thomas

[kamikazeshakedown]

Yesterday, I visited the Rubell Museum in Washington, DC, and it did not disappoint. 

Artists featured: Kehinde Wiley, Vaughn Spann, Keith Haring (x2), Matthew Day Jackson, Hank Willis Thomas (x2), Tschabalala Self, Jenny Holzer (x2).

[yearningforunity]

Farewell Uncle Tom 1971

Hank Willis Thomas

[nevermissblog]

the embrace

the photograph that inspired the monument... 

MLK Jr. hugging Coretta after learning he had won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize 

conceptual artist, Hank Willis Thomas, Boston Common 2023

[frenchcurious]

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976) - Society of the Spectacle (Spectrum IV) 2019. - source Phillips.

[longlistshort]

Sadie Barnette, “Photo Bar”, 2022 (left) and Annette Messager “My Vows (Mes Voeux)”,1990, 106 gelatin silver prints, bound between glass and cardboard, black tape, twine and acrylic push pins (right)

The group exhibition Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother, currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents a variety of photography work from the museum’s collection. The artists explore new ways to take the medium further while exploring a wide range of subjects, often with a focus on capturing the past.

From the museum-

At a time when photographs are primarily shared and saved digitally, many artists are returning to the physicality of snapshots in an album or pictures in an archive as a source of inspiration. Drawing its title, Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother, from a photograph by Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan, the exhibition consists of works in The Met collection from the 1970s to today that reflect upon the complicated feelings of nostalgia and sentimentality that these objects conjure, while underlining the power of the found object.

Among the featured artists is Sadie Barnette, for whom photographs provide a portal to illuminate the forgotten history of the first Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco and her own father’s life as her 2022 work Photo Bar powerfully illustrates. Like Barnette, many of the artists in the exhibition seek to fortify the legacy of family histories, to emphasize the importance of intergenerational relationships, and to consider the ways in which knowledge and respect for the past can inform our current moment. Some artists such as Sophie Calle and Larry Sultan explore their own narratives to reveal the construction of desire, while others including Taryn Simon and Hank Willis Thomas examine histories that have shaped cultural and political dialogue. For some, including Darrel Ellis who utilized family pictures to negotiate the trauma of police violence, the personal is political. Deploying various strategies, these artists consider how a collection of images—like a talisman or an altarpiece—build relationships across time and can transform our understanding of the present.

Larry Sultan “Untitled Film Stills”, 1989, Chromogenic prints

Larry Sultan’s work stood out, as did the museum’s caption (below) that included quotes from the artist.

“It was as if my parents had projected their dreams onto film emulsion. I was in my mid-thirties and longing for the intimacy, security, and comfort that I associated with home. But whose home? Which version of the family?” -Larry Sultan, 1992

In the late 1980s Sultan rephotographed and enlarged single frames from 8mm films his parents made during family vacations three decades earlier.

The artist later explained the genesis of the work:

“I can remember when I first conceived of this project. It was 1982 and I was in Los Angeles visiting my parents. One night, instead of renting a videotape, we pulled out a box of home movies that none of us had seen in years. Sitting in the living room, we watched thirty years of folktales-epic celebrations of the family. They were remarkable, more like a record of hopes and fantasies than of actual events.”

This exhibition closes 9/15/24. The museum’s website also includes images of all of works included.

[oktna]