The Black Masking Indians
The Black Masking Indians collection traces the power of suit-making, street procession, and ritual as forms of memory work, liberatory practice, and Black southern futurity.
Through intimate portraits, close details of beadwork, and scenes of gathering during parades, these images foreground care, craft, and intergenerational knowledge within the closed, tribal communities that keep this tradition alive since the Black Indian masked in 1746 (Hall, 1995).
Photographed in collaboration with culturebearers rather than as spectacle, the series offers the opportunity to read, listen, and recognize Black Masking as an ongoing practice of sovereignty, beauty, and refusal.
