Kevin Claiborne, BLACKNESS IS, 2020

New York-based photographer Kevin Claiborne presents the project BLACKNESS IS. This series of images seeks to highlight and challenge nuanced ideas of Black identity through the presentation of questions and statements blended with landscape scenes of a desert, an environment known to be oppressive towards human life.

Human ecology positions individual development in relationship to one’s environment and social context. Without properly analyzing social context, our identities, however fluid, cannot fully be understood, appreciated, or celebrated. This is especially relevant for Blackness, in the American context: with a past and present history of anti-Blackness, constantly and uniquely shifting presentation and manifestation over time, but remaining equally challenging, much like the desert.