Additional information
by Linda Foard Roberts (Artist), Michelle Lanier (Text by (Art/Photo Books)), Jennifer Sudul Edwards (Text by (Art/Photo Books))
Lament connects the tangibility of history and the geography of memory in the American South.
Through contemporary photographs, personal stories, essays, and quotes, Linda Foard Roberts's latest book connects the tangibility of history and the geography) of memory to a greater understanding of the palpable presence of our shared past in everyday life. Roberts sees her photographic efforts as an ongoing contribution to truth-seeking by bearing witness to the silent stories encoded in our surroundings. Her work examines life, death, fundamental human rights, and excavations of narratives invisibly embedded in our lives. She has seen how such endeavors have the capacity to create opportunities for change, compassion, action, and justice. Lament is designed in two volumes housed in a cloth-covered slipcase. The first volume focuses on her images, while the second volume comprises texts by renowned scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D., Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., Michelle Lanier, and Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., and a poem by E. Ethelbert Miller.
For this project, Roberts employed Civil War-era equipment--an 8x10-inch view camera with a Darlot brass barrel lens--and visited sites across the American South where devastating events in social history took place. This use of historical equipment invokes the temporal merging she seeks to capture in her work--the overlap of the evidence of our past with the present.
Roberts's artwork is held in the collections of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (Charlotte, NC), Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), Gregg Museum of Art and Design (Raleigh, NC), Harry Ransom Center (Austin, TX), Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC), Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, New Orleans Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art (Palm Beach, FL), North Carolina Museum of Art, and The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA).
Author Biography
Linda Foard Roberts (b. 1961) makes work that is deeply personal, rooted in memory, family and local histories, and combined with philosophical inquiries about life, death, and basic human rights. Roberts is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her project Lament, a song of sorrow for those not heard. Preferring the imperfections of old lenses and the history inherent within them, her work is metaphorical and layered, intending to cross language and cultural barriers. Posing the environment as a reflection of ourselves, her photographs engage the transformative cycles that shape our lives, bound by time and what it means to be human, a foundation upon which we can all find common ground. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, at venues in Australia, Guatemala, Argentina, and Germany. Roberts is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her project Lament; photographs from this series are in the collections of The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC and The Columbus Museum, GA. She is represented by SOCO Gallery in North Carolina and Sol del RIO in Guatemala. Roberts lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Michelle Lanier (b. 1975) is on the faculty at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She is the Director of North Carolina's Historic Sites, which is 26 museum spaces, historic structures, and Civil War-era battlefields, former plantation spaces, and an 18th-century gold mine. Her film, Mossville, reveals a global south story of resistance to environmental racism, has been translated into five languages, screened on six continents, and chosen by the United Nations in an effort to raise awareness about the climate crisis and its impact on the lives of people of African descent.
Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D (b. 1970) is the Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. Prior to the Mint, she held curatorial positions at the Norton Simon Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, and the Annenberg Space for Photography.
Cheryl Finley, Ph.D (b. 1964) is an art historian, curator, and contemporary art critic. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University. Her research explores historic and contemporary images of the transatlantic slave trade; she has contributed essays and reviews to numerous magazines and published the award-winning book Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon in 2018.
E. Ethelbert Miller (b. 1950) is an African American poet, teacher, and literary activist based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and the host of weekly WPFW radio show On the Margin.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ph.D (b. 1950) is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films.
