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Jazz, Church, and Black Life

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CHADDS FORD, Pa. (AP) — At first glance, it looks like an aerial photo of a war-ravaged cemetery, with charred coffins torn from shattered concrete vaults and arched marble headstones flattened by a bomb blast.

Then the viewer begins to note the main points: the coffins and vaults are literally parts of a keyboard. Instead of names and dates, words like “vibrato” and “third harmonic” are carved on the apparent gravestones.

“It looks like a graveyard,” said photographer Frank Stewart.

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Stewart’s haunting photograph of a New Orleans church organ that was destroyed by floods brought on by Hurricane Katrina is a component of a retrospective of his profession, which spans a long time of documenting black life in America and exploring African and Caribbean cultures.

“Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present” is on view on the Brandywine Museum of Art through September 22. Brandywine is the fourth and final stop within the exhibition organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia.

“I wanted to talk about the black church and the impact it had on the culture,” Stewart said of his work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “The organ, the music, everything else fits together. It all comes together. I just wanted to show the devastation of the churches, the music, the culture.”

This photo, courtesy of the Brandywine Conservancy and the Museum of Art, shows Frank Stewart’s 1997 photograph, “Stomping the Blues,” as a part of a retrospective of the photographer’s work that’s on view through Sept. 22, 2024, on the museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. (Rob Gibson Collection, Savannah, via AP)

Music is an integral a part of Stewart’s practice, and he was a longtime photographer for the Savannah Music Festival and for 30 years the senior photographer for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, where he worked with artistic director and Grammy Award-winning musician Wynton Marsalis.

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“He’s like a brother to me,” said Stewart, whose exhibit includes “Stomping the Blues,” a 1997 photograph of Marsalis leading his orchestra from the stage during a world tour of his Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz oratorio “Blood on the Fields.”

Stewart, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, has his own ties to jazz and blues. His stepfather, Phineas Newborn Jr., was a pianist who worked with musicians resembling Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus and B.B. King.

Describing himself as a toddler of the “apartheid South,” Stewart drew inspiration from photographers resembling Ernest Cole and Roy DeCarava, who was one in all Stewart’s instructors at New York’s Cooper Union, where Stewart earned a bachelor of nice arts degree. DeCarava’s photographs of Nineteen Fifties Harlem led to a collaboration with Langston Hughes on the 1955 book The Sweet Flypaper of Life.

Photographer Frank Stewart discusses a few of his early work during a press preview of his exhibition on the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Randall Chase)

Cole, a South African photographer, first gained recognition in 1967 with “House of Bondage,” Stewart’s first book, which chronicled the apartheid era using images smuggled in a foreign country. Cole never managed to copy his early success and fell on hard times before he died in New York at age 49. A documentary about him, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” premiered at this 12 months’s Cannes Film Festival.

“He came to New York and was homeless, so I would see him on the street and we would talk,” said Stewart, who’s quick to differentiate between his own work and Cole’s.

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“I consider myself more of an artist than a documentarian,” explained Stewart, who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before moving on to Cooper Union and was a longtime friend and collaborator with artist Romare Bearden.

That’s to not say Stewart doesn’t have journalistic instincts in his blood. He tells the story of a job that included the Chicago Defender, the biggest black-owned every day within the country on the time, and stints with Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines. He’s less keen on a temporary stint in large format, photographing art for brochures and catalogs, which he describes as “boring.”

This photo courtesy of the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art shows Frank Stewart’s 2007 work, “Katrina: Hammond B-3, 9th Ward, New Orleans,” which is a component of a retrospective celebrating the photographer’s work that’s on view through Sept. 22, 2024, on the museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. (Collection of The Medium Group, LLC, courtesy of Larry Ossei-Mensah, via AP)

Despite all this, Stewart has maintained a creative approach to his work, searching for to mix patterns, colors, tones and space in a visually appealing way while never leaving the viewer without discerning the message.

“It still has to be ‘X marks the spot,’” he explained. “It still has to be photographic. It can’t just be abstract.”

Or perhaps. How else to clarify the colour and texture seen in 2002’s “Blue Car, Havana”?

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“It’s all about abstract painting,” Stewart wrote within the text accompanying the photo.

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The retrospective sheds light on how Stewart’s work has modified over time, from his early black-and-white photographs to his newer prints that feature more color.

“They are two different languages,” he said. “English would be black and white. French would be color.”

“I was still working in color, I just didn’t have the money to print them,” he added.

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While photography can communicate information to people concerning the world around them, Stewart noted that there was a gulf between the actual world and photography.

“Reality is a fact, and photography is another fact,” he explained. “The map is not the territory. It is just a map of the territory.”

 

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Mother’s black health crisis is not just the responsibility of black women

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When Erica Chidi launched the Krosno reproductive health platform in 2017, was geared toward remedying the growing Luce in knowledge about reproductive health and strengthening the position of other knowledge.

He also arrived at a time when many were awakening to reality, which because of many system reasons, including access to healthcare and reproductive health education, black women are three to 4 times more likely than their white counterparts because of the reasons related to childbirth.

Now, almost ten years later, after organizations akin to Fund began, and more people know Dulas, Chidi sees progress, but admits that there is still loads to be done. The number of black women did not move significantly despite the general decrease in moms’ mortality.

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Chidi, a health pedagogue, writer and Doula, became a strategic adviser to Perelel Health after the company acquired Krosny in 2024. One of the biggest invasions that she observed in about 15 years of being doula and work on this space is the growing awareness of black women with their resources, including douls and the middle part.

“13 years ago, no one really knew what doula was, except for a certain level of white women,” explained Doula.

She added that in the south there was also “greater awareness” because the heritage of the midwife from “Grandma Midwives” and slavery remained a bit “intact” for years.

“But generally no one really knew. So now at least everyone knows what it is. Some insurance covers it. This is a more famous amount. This is a big change,” she continued. “So I know that change is possible.”

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In addition to financing birth, through which Chidi is amongst advisers, other organizations, akin to Black Matas Matter Alliance, have also joined the conversation to develop solutions regarding the crisis. However, based solely on black women, to extend your knowledge about Dulas and reproductive health typically, he maintains the weight on them as a substitute of where it really belongs.

“Black women are amazing,” said Chidi. “We are resourceful and we can simply do it in the darkest moments and with the smallest number of resources. But this will not solve the whole problem. This must exist.”

According to Chidi, more “mixed method” would must include healthcare suppliers and the general public that increases their involvement in solving the Black Mother’s crisis.

In Virginia, where some Black Mother’s mortality rates are the highest, Virginia Union University has turn out to be the first HBCU to launch the Doula certificate program. Although technically still black women come to unravel an issue for themselves, this is an example that might be followed throughout the country.

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Chidi said that “more of this” response level is needed, noting that other institutions can offer their very own versions. In addition to funds that may help families find birth employees, there needs to be funds that may help people train to turn out to be birth employees.

“We must see the care that is in line with the actual situation in which we find ourselves,” she said. “Which means it is academic. It is at the level of practice, and then it is also social.”

Ultimately, the real solution to this problem would require everyone to be involved. Like many individuals, they walk with practical knowledge or knowledge of basic first aid or resuscitation, Chidi would really like to see the same level of consciousness with pregnancy and pregnant people.

Chidi sees it this fashion: regardless of whether an individual has children or intends: “your duty is to find out about pregnancy and postpartum.”

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Of course, everyone can’t be an authorized dulas, but understanding what some things seem like in a pregnant person is usually a difference in a deadly complication.

She said that it might be “all about re -opening the channels and sharing.”

“My best skill is to tell stories,” she continued. “It has always been this way because it makes you a good teacher. This is what you also make you really good doula. Because you really help people tell the story of your body so that other people can hear it.”

A month of mental health awareness begins with an urgent report on the mental health of the Black Mother

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This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Lil us X in the hospital says that “he lost control over the right side” of his face

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This week, rapper Lil Nas X has released an update where it was. On Monday evening, the rapper published a video to Instagram revealing that he was hospitalized.

“By the way, I practice a full smile,” says laughter. “I’m just what the hell? I can’t even laugh, brother, what the hell? Oh my God, man. So … yes.”

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While the rapper “Old Town Road” didn’t determine his diagnosis, he told the fans: “Sooo (I) lost control of the right side of my face.” After his post, fans began to wonder if the star developed Bella’s paralysis, a state that causes muscle weakness and paralysis on one side of the face. However, According to Johns Hopkins MedicineThe cause of the condition affecting the nerves of the face is unknown.

Despite the fans conspiracy, Lil NAS X continued to update his health about his stories on Instagram.

“Guys, I’m fine !! Stop being sad to me! Instead, shake your ass!” He wrote about his history in keeping with the variety. “IMMA looks funny like a bit, but that’s all.”

Similarly, today the rapper said: “It’s much better” in a movie published in his history on Instagram, explaining that he regained sensation into the mouth and performs chewing exercises to strengthen the muscle.

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David E. Talbert sells memories for six characters

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The director, author, playwright and producer David E. Talbert sold his memory “Everything I know about being a man (I learned from a woman)” for six characters to Storehouse Voices, a random Punguin Publishing House. He also develops a television program with the identical title.

According to the memories of Talbert He emerged from conversations He He had together with his son, which meant that he realized that his mother, a single mother, gave him all the teachings he learned to be a person.

According to the web site, Storehouse Voices focuses on “promoting the wealth of a black story through intentional acquisition and employment of efforts, strategic partnerships and the authentic range of the community, which it is going to achieve by publishing literary and fictitious books.

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According to Storehouse, Voices was published in January 2025, Created in cooperation with the Tamira ChapmanFrom the success of the Chapman’s Women & Words program, which was launched with the support of Storehouse in a box and Penguin Random House, which was aimed toward “deisting the publishing industry and its processes” for insufficiently represented authors.

The declaration that broadcasts the imprint is: “Warehouse voices are informed by a deep understanding of the unique cultural contexts and historical black experiences in America and involved in ensuring that literary works of insufficiently represented authors are presented authentically, with respect and strongly in the entire landscape of publications and the media.”

This is thick with the final arch of Talbert’s profession, which, like Tyler Perry, began with stage arts aimed toward telling the black stories of the Black audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHMMRG8Gytk

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In 2024, in an interview with the Wielofenate, he said that “Jingle Jangle”, a Christmas film, who wrote and directed by which Forest Whitaker and Keegan Michael Key performed, was created due to his childhood of the sensation of excluded fantasy, because he often didn’t see black children represented within the media of his youth.

According to 2023, Talbert launched HBCU Next, a scholarship program that he founded and financed together with his wife and production partner, Lyn Sisson-Talbert, To enrich the tutorial possibilities available for beginner filmmakers in HBCUS Bringing them to the School of Cinematic Arts USC School of Cinematic Arts program.

As Talbert said on this system: “Our general goal is to support the environment for students from HBCU and the USC to get involved in cultural exchange of learning from each other, and to provide access to education conducive to providing black storytellers to the entertainment industry.”

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This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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