Giving Compass' Take:

• Nyasha Laing highlights three Black photographers and their role in shaping and capturing the moment for Black lives. 

• What role can you play in supporting artists of color working to reveal the truth? 

• Read about funding Black artists. 

The streets are ablaze with peaceful protest. And across the country, photographers have been capturing the fire. Black people and their oppression have perhaps never had such a visible platform.

Years from now, these images will stand as record of a momentous shift in American consciousness. Those behind the camera lens and those constantly within its gaze have questions. What narrative will endure after the dust settles? What power dynamics come into play in who creates and curates the images and their context? What is the role of Black artists in the movement for Black lives?

Three Black photographers discuss their role in shaping the face of the Black lives movement, and how this moment feels different.

Creating A New Conversation

Ruddy Roye is a notable Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based photojournalist whose portraits on his popular Instagram page center themselves in protest. He has documented the resistance surrounding the killings of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castille and traces his awareness and creative sensibilities to reggae music, poetry, and the human rights epochs of the 1960s and 1970s. His work reveals an understanding of the power of art to change the way Black people see themselves and the spaces where their representations are consumed.

Making the Radical Irresistible

Baltimore-based organizer, photographer, and graphic artist Rob Ferrell shares Roye’s commitment to photographing the Black community in its fullness—in leadership, joy, and struggle.

Ferrell, 34, wears several hats as a senior organizer and trainer with a group called Organizing Black. When leading a protest, his primary focus is “the organizing, marshaling, scanning and being safety-oriented, and being in community with other folks,” Ferrell said.

But he also takes shots.

Radicalizing the Black Artist

Photographer karen marshall is also the Executive Director of Rethink, a New Orleans-based organization that challenges 12- to 25-year-old Black youth to think critically about their social and political identities and to shift power in their communities. She inherited the craft of photography from her father and started taking photos at age 14.

She had a vision for documenting Black joy that led her to Mardi Gras and the streets of New Orleans—spaces “where we get to be real.” So often we have to be vigilant, she said—a sentiment echoed by Ferrell: “Radical joy—the cookouts, the smoke session, or whatever it is—is necessary for our revolution.”

Read the full article about Black photographers by Nyasha Laing at YES! Magazine.