“The Hold Up” was inspired by the courage of my fellow BMe Leader, Leon Ford who was shot five times by Pittsburgh Police and survived.
Being a 2016 BMe leader and helping to create effective social change in Pittsburgh has been transformative in my life, but I wanted to do more. Once I had the concept for the photo locked in, I called upon my BMe leaders who dropped what they were doing to support our brother Ford.
I decided to shoot the photo in the middle of the street on Liberty Avenue with disruption in mind to display how we will not be moved. “The Hold Up” is the definition of how brothers from all walks of life––doctors, athletes, businessman, CEO’s and more––can come to together and hold each other up through it all. WE ARE POWERFUL. WE ARE STRONG. WE ARE KINGS.
All in all, If we change the Optics that we download, we can upload a new voice for the world to hear.
“OpticVoices,” presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, is my first curated photography exhibit featured at the August Wilson Center. OpticVoices is a fully interactive photography exhibit where we provide the optics and you provide the voices through captioning. It is a launch pad for hard conversations about social change that need to happen in this country. Two interactive iPads are featured in the exhibition where people can go in and caption the photos. You can also go to www.opticvoices.org and add your own thoughts for dialogue between other commentators.
The exhibit came about after I had taken photos at a Black Lives Matter rally downtown Pittsburgh. At the protest, there was a small 2-year-old boy named Da’Kari who tugged his mother to hold a sign. Although he could not read the sign, he understood the importance of standing in solidarity with it.
The photo of him holding the sign stating, “I am a Human Being,” created by artist Bekezela Mguni, created the spark for the exhibit.
The exhibit opened Sept. 23, with attendance in the thousands. Schools and organizations alike have been using “OpticVoices” as a powerful tool to begin to be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations about changing the narrative of our communities.
Due to high demand, the exhibit is running until Jan. 1, 2017.
(For more information on the exhibit, visit www.trustarts.org.)
Like us at https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Pittsburgh-Courier/143866755628836?ref=hl
Follow @NewPghCourier on Twitter https://twitter.com/NewPghCourier
