Celebrate 30 years of the OA.

With original work from Imani Perry, Kristen Arnett, Diane Roberts, and so many others, our Spring Issue honors our past and looks into our expansive future.

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Pickled Memories

Artist: Adrian White

Project: Pickled Memories: White’s Only

Description: Concerned with inter-generational memory and trauma, photographer Adrian White has created a series of photographs documenting his family’s past and present, while imagining a better future. In Mason jars like those his grandmother used for canning preserves, White suspends family snapshots in corn syrup, capturing the “pickled memories” in various settings: smashed against the pavement, buried in the backyard, neatly lined up on a porch railing.

In addition to their appearances in the archival photographs, White’s family is central to the project, with his mother, siblings, and nieces and nephews participating in many of the photoshoots. The effect is that of a timeline folding in on itself, with what once was past now fully present. By creating parallel timelines and nesting history within contemporary images, White explains, his process “places as much an emphasis on preserving memories as it does creating images. Memories have the power to heal. We just have to pay attention to what they’re trying to tell us.”

 


Eyes on the South&\#xA0;is curated by&\#xA0;Jeff Rich. The weekly series features selections of current work from Southern artists, or artists whose photography concerns the South. To submit your work to the series, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..





Adrian White

Los Angeles and New York-based photographer Adrian White creates portraiture primarily dealing with memory, trauma, and history from the perspective of people of the African diaspora. His goal is to connect with his ancestors by remembering the past, documenting the present, and imagining a utopian future.