#documentingthediaspora

[moneymyboyfriendowesme]

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe // photographer historian activist // Moutoussamy-Ashe grew up in Chicago and began taking weekend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago as a young child. At age 15, she picked up her first camera. She studied at the Cooper Union and during her junior year traveled to West Africa. In Ghana, she photographed fishing communities and grew interested in the connections between West African traditions and the African diaspora. From 1977 to 1981, she documented the Gullah/Geechee people of Daufuskie Island, recording their lives and homes as they faced encroachment and erasure by developers. Descendants of enslaved West Africans, the Gullah people are speakers of perhaps the only distinctly African creole language native to the US and deeply influential in the development of Southern vocabulary and speech patterns. The Daufuskie Island collection was donated to National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2014. ... Moutoussamy-Ashe's artistic practice fostered her interest in the history of black women photographers. Together with Deborah Willis (artist and Chair of the Department of Photography at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU), Moutoussamy-Ashe began searching for documentation of these artists, using phonebooks as her finding aids. Until the 1950s, black businesses listed in phonebooks would be identified with "C"; this marker of segregation became a clue for Moutoussamy-Ashe to follow. In 1986, she published "Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers," featuring black women artists dating back to 1866. One of the first studies of its kind, "Viewfinders" and the ongoing work of Dr. Willis inspired subsequent generations, including Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and Adama Delphine Fawundu, creators of "MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora," the first publication in an annual series. // #blackhistoryisamericanhistory ... #jeannemoutoussamy-ashe #deborahwillis #mfon #blackphotographers #womenphotographers #gullah #daufuskieisland #documentingthediaspora ... 📸: Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, by Fern Logan; "Daufuskie Island: Susie Standing Next to Holy Picture," "Daufuskie Island: Cousins," “Hard Hats,” all Jeanne Moutoussam https://www.instagram.com/p/Btk7NPdBUov/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=6sjexnituf9x