 It's been such an honor to work on this program alongside my colleagues in the Adult Programs Department, our curators Terry Carbone and Kelly Jones, and all the artists that are here today. We'd also like to thank the Ford Foundation for their support in this program. There are some exhibitions that profoundly impact the way we see the world around us and witness does just that. That art has empowered a smart conversation to shape, debate, and to push us forward is evident from the work of the exhibition and by the artists we'll hear from today. Our schedule for the day is listed on your programs. We encourage you to stay all afternoon and join us for the reception afterwards. Also, if you have not had a chance to see the witness exhibition on the first floor, we encourage you to take some time to do so. Now, without further ado, please help me in welcoming to the stage curator Terry Carbone, artists Jack Whitten, Bruce Davidson, Mark DeSubbro, Latoya Ruby Frasier, and Abigail DeVille. Thank you. We have with us two panels of outstanding artists with whom we'd like to explore across generations the idea and practice of art that is activist. Although you may already know who's who, I'm just going to run down the line here. We have Jack Whitten, Abigail DeVille, Latoya Ruby Frasier, Bruce Davidson, and Mark DeSubbro. We're going to begin by having each of our panelists speak for about five minutes individually about their activism and art. In doing so, I've asked them to think about two things. First, the personal experience or particular place that generated their activism. And second, the community of colleagues or mentors, if there was such a community within which they created this work. So I'd like to begin with Jack. Okay. First, I would like to say I'm from Bessemer, Alabama. I'm born in 1939. That means that I grew up in the height of the civil rights movement. My mom used to hold meetings at home to teach people how to pass the test for voting. You couldn't just go vote. You had to pass the test to vote. And on top of that, you had to pay poll tax. It was a big thing. I grew up with memory of critical claims actually creating down on the street more than once. I grew up with horrific things. A lot of stuff that I don't even talk about anymore. My first encounter with activism was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1959. That was what drove me from the south. I was a student at Southern University and took part in one of the first demonstrations in Baton Rouge. At that time, Baton Rouge, that was one of the worst spots in the south that one could be. What started as a very peaceful demonstration ended up being something extremely violent, extremely nasty. That's what changed my mind. That's why I left the south. I had met Martin Luther King when I was a freshman at Tuskegee Institute in 1957. And I believed in what he was saying. But I warn all of you, it's one thing to believe in the theory of something, but when it switches over to actual realism, it will change you. I agreed to this march, I did it, but I felt that I would never do it again. Jack, do you want to just say a bit about your transition to New York and who you started to work around when you arrived? When I first came to New York, a lot of part of 5th to 9th, I fell into the Cedar Barrow crowd. I was a student. I came to New York to study. I took a Greyhound bus from New Orleans to New York. I ended up on the lower east side of Manhattan. Some of the first people I met, just through certain standards, was Bill McCoon in Frank's Climb. Later, Robert Blackburn, who was a instructor at the Cooper Union, he worked in the printmaking workshop. And Robert Blackburn took me to see Roman Bearden. And Roman Bearden was the main introduction in the Black Arts community. Roman Bearden took me to see Norman Lewis. It was Roman Bearden who took me to see Jacob Lawrence. I was fortunate in coming to New York. I had the opportunity to meet both sides of the divide. And that was very fortunate for me. It shaped a lot of my ideas, being able to go and speak with Bearden, to speak with Lawrence, to go to town, to speak with Lewis. And at the same time being able to speak with Bill McCooning, it meant a lot to me. So I must say that that helped to shape who I am today. Great. I should mention that while each of our panelists is introducing their discussion, there will be slides behind us. Here are two works by Jack, both from 1964. On your left, Birmingham 1964, which is in the witness show downstairs. And on the right, head number seven. So Bruce, I'm going to ask you to speak next. I'm just amazed at this gentleman's life. Monife was quite different. I grew up in the Midwest. My mother was a single parent. She worked in the torpedo factory during the Second World War. My brother and I were taught to be self-sufficient. We could cook, we could clean. We could meet our mother at the corner store to help her with groceries and that kind of thing. But the decisive moment in my life was I had spent 1959 a year with the Brooklyn teenagers, a gang called the Joker's. And at the end of the year, the mafia got a hold of the fact that I was photographing and there might be money in it. And so I had to leave New York. I went to England and then I came back and I started to photograph a project I called Youth in America based on my Brooklyn gang experience. Someone said, well, you ought to go down to Jackson, Mississippi and be with the young people who are on a bus. I had no idea what that was. But it sort of intrigued me. Youth, bus, a project I received at Brooklyn Fellowship to follow through on. And so I started and it just changed me completely because I rode on the bus. I was with them. And so for the next four or five years, I photographed in most of the demonstrations throughout the north and south. And that's all I have to say except the photograph of Viola LaRusa was important to me. I heard that she had been shot and I knew approximately where the car was and I got up at 4.30 before the police get there. And I was able to take one or two frames before the police started chasing me. They more than chased me, they took their weapons out of their holsters. But you can see in the black and white photograph the blood stains on the sea. And the fact that there was a woman there who was shot by the Ku Klux Klan. Anyway, there it is. So four years of intensive work and that's the way I work. Now the important thing about my experience and four years on the civil rights movement, I suddenly felt the need to photograph one block in New York. And I did. I photographed East 100 Street for four years making 4,000 individual images. I gave prints to people and I still go back. There's a funeral or party or block party. People are still inviting me back to East 100 Street. And then the rest of my life is keep going. It's just about keep going. Thanks Bruce. We have Mark next. I was there when Martin Luther King spoke. We went down carrying a sign against police brutality. My brother worked very hard in Newark Emergency Civil Liberties Union. And he put the Newark Police Department into receivership when they were shooting blacks in the East Street. I was born in China. The whole thing is that the moment that we have changed, we who have worked for the marches, whatever we could do, we have changed the world. You can change the world if you act united. If everybody is willing to do it and understands that the cost is just, you can organize in Dirt Island and the rest of it in Chicago and Washington D.C. Most recently, I've never been arrested in this town before, but most recently arrested against the re-election of George Bush. But the real thing to know is that it can be done. We stopped the war in Vietnam. And, you know, we're all, we're all related. We're one family. And the blood is always great. They're violent people out there. But if you have that idea that Gandhi had, you know, nonviolence, the cops, when they saw me in a nonviolent position in Chicago, they didn't know how to react. So they threw me into the pool where it was very cold that day. They didn't want to go into the pool after me, or they picked me up afterwards, you know, the usual thing. But if you have this kind of ideal and you work with people, they have it too. You can change the world. Do you want to say a word about the Artist Tower of Peace and a protest from 1966? In Chicago, that was in LA. LA, which is on the left side of the screen here. Yeah, right. We built that all together. Artists from all over gave their works, their paintings. Everybody did their paintings, and then they wouldn't allow us to put it onto the tower. You're going to run up against constantly, you know, like they say, no, it can't change. It can't happen, you know, like we have these laws. But you can do it anyway. And that's the real thing. The other one is a piece that I made in a parking lot. I worked alone building it until a couple months ago. And I like working with steel because it has just enough flexibility and we all live on iron. Our blood, which is all related. Our blood and these, human globin, which is iron, that's what carries the oxygen around. And I've always liked steel because David Smith and Milton Rosenberg and other people are great friends of mine. Thanks. And we'll hear from Latoya next. I have two images by Latoya. They're on the screen now. So good afternoon. And it's really an honor to be up here. I mean, I'm very young. I was born in 1982. I'm not part of the exhibition. And I was really touched going through the show because, you know, thinking about contemporary art and where work like mine can exist, this type of social documentary work that's concerned about human rights issues and equality and race and class issues, we don't really see that reflected currently. There's really no place for it in contemporary art. And seeing an exhibition like this here at the Brooklyn Museum gives me that inspiration and hope that what I'm doing actually is valid and important. So for 12 years I've been making work on my family and community up from Braddock, Pennsylvania. It's nine miles outside of Pittsburgh. It's Andrew Carnegie's hometown. It's where he came from Scotland and he started the Edgar Thompson plant, which was established in 1872 and also the first Carnegie Library, which is in Braddock, established in 1889. So my work really grapples with the invisibility of men and women from my community that for decades have been omitted and overlooked in the history, the grand American narrative history, as well as the media representation of what's currently happening in Braddock. And so in the same vein as someone like Gordon Parks or even someone like Bruce Davidson, I began picking up my camera and using it as a tool and a weapon to speak back towards things I don't like about America, which is discrimination and equality and racism. And the way that my work has expanded over the years is going from the personal autobiographical narrative work of my grandmother, my mother and me. My grandmother grew up in the 1930s when Braddock was very prosperous and a melting pot and had a lot of power. My mother grew up in the 60s during segregation and after the GI Bill started to influence our white counterparts to move away and disinvest in Braddock. And then I grew up in the 1980s, which was followed by the war on drugs where I witnessed my whole family and community be decimated. And so I felt that it was very necessary to make a human document that spoke honestly and earnestly to the real situation at hand and the severity of what happened after the still-no-industry collapsed in the 70s and the subsequent abuse by our government, low-born state level against African-American communities. And so the image that you see of Mr. Jim Kidd in front of the hospital was actually, you know, these images are now, the one of my grandmother she passed away in 2009 and the one of Mr. Jim Kidd in front of the Braddock UPMC Hospital was taken in 2011. So imagine a community of mostly elderly people that are disenfranchised, underemployed people that no longer are employed by the factory, even though it's still there. So the United States Still Corporation has abused us and discarded our bodies. And now the healthcare system has also decided to abandon us. So not only do we not have jobs, we don't have healthcare. And so it became very necessary for me to start to show up at a site like Braddock Hospital with Mr. Jim Kidd holding a sign that says race-based, class-based healthcare and really grappling with the reality. Currently, you would hear more narratives about Braddock being a new place for urban pioneers, but the reality is actually what's here in this photograph with Mr. Jim Kidd. There's no media discussion that is dealing with the fact that Braddock was one of the most polluted towns and cities in the United States. And so, you know, through me seeking a correction of American history and art and social justice, I've taken it upon myself to produce a counter-narrative and to build my own archive to preserve our history. Thanks a lot. Abigail? I'm Ross, born and raised. I think the formative moment for me was the end of Juliana's reign of whatever. I was a high school senior, and Amade Diallo got shot, you know, 41 times, and the cops were acquitted. And it was in that moment, like being 17 and thinking about being a self-possessed person and actually trying to navigate, you know, spaces in this world, but actually that your body doesn't really belong to you, that there's already an inscribed history that people are projecting onto it. And so I think that definitely planted a seed for me to start thinking about ideas of invisibility or thinking about the visible representation of the invisible. And these two works right here, the first one being at the New Museum in 2012 and the second at the Studio Museum in 2012. The first one was called Dark Days, but it was based on this documentary of, quote unquote, mold people that were living underground and had built homes for themselves that had running water or electricity. And they were a community of people that took care of each other and they documented their story. But they were being forced to move and relocate. And thinking about the placement or the history of the Bowery, the placement of the New Museum and this driving force of redevelopment and to move sort of the invisibles or the undesirables or poor people that are constantly being shifted and tossed around this city since the very exception of it. But thinking about that also in relation to, at the same time I was thinking about this space at the New Museum I saw a show of Jacob Reed's photos and I saw how those spaces that people had created for themselves at the turn of the 19th into 20th century mirrored the exact spaces that these people had created for themselves in the late 90s, early 2000s underground. And then the other day I saw an article online of people living underneath the Manhattan Bridge and so the things, it's a continual kind of way of people having to be forced to navigate certain kinds of claustrophobic spaces. And then in the second piece, Harlem Tower of Babel, was me thinking about the oppression of very specific New Yorkers over the 21st century. But all the materials on the outside of the sculpture were rusted and they came from a page in South Brooklyn called Dead Horse Bay that was a little town that Robert Moses bulldozed down to the ground and the debris from some of those homes is still on the beach so there's like depression error, plurals, bottles and things like that. So I was able to get those things and put it on the outside of the piece and in the interior there's domestic objects that belong to my grandmother who was a part of what I considered this invisible class of New Yorkers and things that came from her bronze apartment that she lived in for 50 years. Thank you. I'm going to ask a few questions of Jack, Bruce and Mark whose works are included in the witness exhibition and then I'm going to turn the floor over to Latoya and Abigail who will continue the conversation. I'm going to back up to Jack's work. It seems like invisibility is something that is really at play here in the effort to overcome it and I want to ask Jack if he could speak a little. When we first were talking about Birmingham 1964 almost a year ago Jack you were talking about the materials you used here including the veil of stocking mesh in the middle of this work which sort of presents almost like a battle between the devices of abstraction and a realistic documentary image. Could you talk a little bit about the notion of the veil at the center of this work? Well first of all that photo is the famous photograph that a bunch of different artists used. It was well known it was distributed throughout the world that photo. For me personally when I saw it when it came across the newsstand my reaction was this is my hometown that this took place in. So for me it was extremely personal. The veil was used of course metaphorically not so metaphorically really it came right out of New Boys so the black folks everything that he spoke about the notion of this veil that we were forced to live under that we really couldn't see the outside because of this. I use that to peer into that's a womb that thing is really torn open to pull to peel apart it's a womb something pierces that those hosts a host is a weapon when it's used at that high pressure not the hell out of you it's a weapon that's what was used on those kids that day and of course the dogs but that thing was built as a womb that was actually cut to open and to reveal something that happened deep down it was a personal reference for me the piece on the right is hard to see it came from a group of things that I did a series in the early 1960s I had just came out of art school and I was looking for a way to penetrate something and I had no way of doing it I turned to process I grew up with the story of a picture that occurred in a courthouse window my father was born in Mississippi we would go to Mississippi to visit my granddaddy in the distant family we passed through the small town on the border of Mississippi in Alabama there was a window there in a courthouse with an image the story is that even when the glass was removed a historical blue glass that this image would appear I remember this we would be in a car going to Mississippi we would pass through this town it's the story of a man that was lynched they claimed that he was on the second floor of the courthouse staring out at the mob that was gathering in the courtyard a very strong thunderstorm which is frequent in Alabama and there was a flash a big bolt of lightning and they claimed that the lightning flashed this man's image into the window I grew up with this story it was pointed out to me I couldn't have been more than three years old, four years old but I remember this all of those paintings that I did from this period are ghost images this one is called the lynching that image was seared into my brain it was something that I couldn't paint I couldn't take up a brush and paint it later through reading especially the German philosophy herself the word is it's an image it's an old ancient word truth, some people think it's the beginning of the icon it is something that one cannot paint it is something that your hands cannot do it's something that exists as imagery through the notion of process you find this kind of imagery it's something that is always intriguing all of those paintings were done with that thought in mind that's lynching again it's very hard to see some of them will be shown though the curator who assured curating my first retrospective at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art opening in September we're going to show those paintings that have been shown I never had the opportunity to show them my first art dealer was Alan Stone who was very helpful in giving me my first show told me point blank those are not paintings so I put them on the back burner what did he want instead what did he want that you were doing what did he want to show well this is 1964 the abstract expressionists are still running the full room in New York City just full abstraction Bill McCooning the client Alan was a promoter of abstract expressionists and I've been a follower of Bill McCooning during just full abstract works Alan loved them so he gave me my first show on those paintings but those things they were built by taking a piece of mesh again not alone everything in mesh stretching it over cotton duck trapping the acrylic in between a layer of mesh and cotton duck and literally removing the excess paint they are all of you upon seeing those paintings would swear that you're looking at fuzzy photographs that's what they look like it led me to go to my studio wall and I wrote on my studio wall in bold letters the image is photographic therefore I must photograph my thoughts that caused a lot of problems in my life because for a number of years there I walked around thinking that I was a camera it's a funny thought but by 1968-69 walking around thinking that you were a camera caused some serious psychological problems so I put those fuzzy photographic paintings fast on the back of my heart only recently though now I've had a discovered a way to penetrate that kind of imagery again through the process I'm now dealing with paint where I take the paint through three different processes construction reconstruction the paint now has become what I call a fragment a tessera the acrylic is broken into fragmented pieces and the image is built on those fragmented it gives me the opportunity to penetrate that kind of stuff the veil coming out of Dubois this young lady, a toyer there of Dubois I'm sorry excuse me the last painting out of my studio is entitled Dubois Legacy if Dubois had not written that book The Soul of Black Orange and if he had not stood up but the principle of aesthetics I wouldn't be here today it wouldn't be possible for me to be here today it would be possible for me to do what I'm doing I went to Tuskegee Tuskegee was Booker T. Washington that was his baby it was Dubois though who led the path that black folks deserved the right to make the inquiry into aesthetics not just the vocational not just the sweat of one brows but the sweat of one's brain it's the mind with that we were able to penetrate the veil thanks Jack it's an amazing thing Bruce, I wanted to address the next question to you you mentioned your work on the Brooklyn Gangs project in 1959 and then you head to the south and I'm wondering what was the difference in the way you worked you similarly immersed yourself in your subject but as you mentioned you didn't use a telephoto lens you were using a Leica how did you how did you immerse yourself in this new setting and your new subject after the Brooklyn Gang was published Alex Lieberman at Vogue magazine called me into his office and he said I had lunch with Cartier-Bresson and I asked Cartier-Bresson if the young Davidson could do fashion he said look if he can do gangs he certainly can do fashion so Vogue gave me a big fat contact I photographed all the top models never took any of them out they were almost 12 for me and I was too naive then I went down to Montgomery, Alabama to ride on freedom rides and then after that experience I called Lieberman up and I said I'm not doing any more fashion it's gone I'll go to countries for you I'll do portraits for you but I no longer will do fashion for you and that sustained me over all the years that I photographed on my own I wasn't a son I liked it better that way did I answer your question? Yeah absolutely and how did you sort of choose your subjects after the the bus trip that you made other works in the show like the car of Biola Luzo and the Clan shot which is an amazing photograph done at night how did you find yourself at these places? In terms of the Clan cross-burning that I witnessed I was in Atlanta and they were handing out leaflets the leaflets said Biola Luzo cross-burning will be on such and such farm and I took it down and I went there just after dark at that time I had a little Volkswagen and I got too close to the fire and they made an announcement New York High New York Plates says you're too close to the fire and I knew I had to get out of there I'm still running one of the most moving things that happened on the summer march was I met Mrs. Ann May Blackman who had seven or eight children a sharecropper and she allowed me to photograph her holding her youngest child years later after the march was over I went back and I found the whole family and the younger children had gone to school the older children couldn't have gone the old adults were illiterate but the children all had really wonderful lives one was the attorney reading specialist at the I would think you would call her she was a she had a master's degree I mean when photographing her I had a pot belly stove in a cabin and then years later a senior legal librarian the state capitol in Montgomery and John Blackman has his own energy truck he buys himself air conditioning equipment he's an engineer so each child I rephotographed and we had a wonderful time just being together she's a insurance agent for farmers in that area all but one still lived in that area Alabama so that was what my photographs agreed for to bring a new awareness a larger awareness and getting back to Mark when the whole idea of the tower protest came about on a show I believe how did your involvement in that begin I think that when people are working for peace that they gravitate towards each other they help each other what we can do together is what is important right now a group of artists and myself have changed a plot of land that was considered garbage it's called Sakri sculpture park but it is this idea working together there was a book bruised by a friend of mine on most of the photographs called the movement and I think that photography has changed this whole world that we live in you look at these two dimensional you can turn them over the backside is always but sometimes you can see the image of injustice you can see the image of something that needs to be changed and you know you guys are young you can change the world thanks I'm going to turn the floor over now to Latoya and Abigail and ask them to ask whatever they would like of our fellow panelists here anyone prefer to begin or Latoya? I would like to ask one more question yes absolutely okay yeah I think this question would be for Mr. Davidson in terms of looking at documentary and the position that it's at today versus when you made East 100th Street you know I'm a young practitioner that really believes in social documentary and the fact that it can counter social representations that promote racism, class issues gender issues issues of citizenship and there's not really much support necessarily that's out there currently it's in its own realm like for example in this exhibition there are approximately 30 images and I can see how photography was so important in terms of changing our minds and preserving our history and making us remember the legacy of America but there's such a gap today we don't have that opportunity to have these conversations in our classrooms we don't have that support currently at these institutions determining what is valid or what's in the market I've been told myself that my work's not fashionable it's not important why are you making this work but it's this conviction and hope that this is the thing that I need to do and why I'm here and I wonder if you could speak to that and what your understanding and point of view is of this gap that's happening generationally and also how you were able to continue just white work quietly with myself knowing that I need to make this work I'm not an activist most of my work is about my own personal growth as a human being photographs must be human sights on humanity but I'm not an activist per se Easter Hunter Street was important to me I was single I lived in a one room apartment with a sliding door for a dark room kitchen combination with a red light and a refrigerator I lived pretty much like a monk and I would just everyday go to the Easter Hunter Street and hang out I had no agenda and I didn't want to meet any organizations although the organization called Metro North gave me permission to photograph in their in their neighborhood the first day on the Hunter Street was very important to me I was standing there with my large format camera tripod and a strobe and one came up to me and she said what are you doing young lad what are you doing I said oh I'm photographing the ghetto and she said what you call a ghetto I call my home and that gave me the feeling the necessary feeling to be in the homes and photograph people in their homes and then the photographs were always donated to the community they had photographs and sometimes I saw my photograph in their apartment and sometimes they cut out somebody so it became dynamic those photographs ended up now have a home they were first shown at the Museum of Modern Art and then the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired it so that in the Hunter Street body work is in a safe place that someone can use that as research that answers your question now I'm starting to think about very particular images in this body of work and I don't know if you've been challenged or criticized critically about some of the nude images versus some of the other ones where they're clothed and they're standing in their apartments but I wonder your decision in terms of editing that work what was the difference between the strategy or the reason that there were these really elegant beautiful images of a mother and a child nude on their bed versus the ones where they're actually standing there like is there a difference there or politically or why was that necessary to show together and why you kept some of those in the book there's always a story behind the story I had an assistant from the block Jose Rosa who said that he had his cousin who wants to be a model and I said well would she have agreed a photograph in a nude with her child but covered up it's not an explicit image and so we photograph and then I sent photographs to Vogue and they ran and so she became a model, I mean a top model just by virtue of being published there are only two or three nudes in that I'm very shy they had to come out of somebody who one woman was pregnant and she had to be seen there might have been others I think if I had an opportunity I'd photograph everybody and I don't have the opportunity thank you well I guess this question is from Mr. Quinton thinking about what you said about double consciousness and thinking about self-possession and changing the processes of pain and the letters of pain that you use and then almost the way that they're cut in a group formation or like when you used the afro pics and the writing are all of these things as this in reference to specifically just the violent history of that has like genetically altered the african-americans their experience the way that they function within different social spaces legacies that are projected on to them whether they're aware of them or not all of these things thinking about the self-position of an individual how you have insulated you know how you feel about yourself and your view of the world and everything else is projected you making those marks is that in the specific reference to the just the long history and the things that you said about the ghosting of that the lynched man or the nylon veil creationists I don't believe in that come out of evolution to evolve there are two major stages the evolutionary process one is Darwinian natural another one is synthetic all of us everybody in this room and everybody on the planet has been under the influence and are in the influence of synthetic evolution we are evolving whether you like it or not whether you know it or not there's a lot of different forces out there that's shaping us I grew up with vowels yes vowels played part in that evolutionary role to cut something, to scrape something to cut through something to reveal the layers of something military exists down in layers it's in layers I have a memory that reoccurs all the time Bessemeral Obama in the summertime was hot muggy the humidity would hit 89 degrees feel like you were in a steam bath one of the most difficult things for me and indeed black cats in my neighborhood was to walk down 3rd avenue past a white swimming pool that we couldn't go in and to see those kids there in the pool having fun in the water but I couldn't go that hurt, still hurts my older brother and some old kids, the older boys we had a creek called Parsons Creek they downed it up and made a swimming pool for us it was fantastic it was so refreshing I'll never forget it we had the classical cartile rope that we could swing from a tree and fall into it and enjoy ourselves but you believe it those bastards came one night the first kid that jumped in the next morning came out with bloody feet they couldn't stand the fact that we were enjoying ourselves in a swimming pool you hear me nobody forgets things like that of course of course it's part of the evolutionary process we have changed, I have changed we continue to change I'm a child of the sixes in the sixes we made a big deal about consciousness and layers of consciousness I still believe in that what I'm working I'm very much aware of the notion of compression that takes place all of that stuff is compressed down in those areas I have to cut it open to get to it but when I cut it open I'm a pragmatist I have to put it back together there's a lot to be compressed and it takes a long time there's a lot in painting that's pure formal stuff but the formal is only a part of painting I'm old fashioned in that sense I believe in plasticity and I believe in sensibility I think that art comes out of the process of plasticity and sensibility I try to keep it simple I believe that plasticity in its most simplest form is to make something how will I put it together and I believe some implicit truth I believe that sensibility is purely a matter of how I feel about something again I try to keep it simple I believe that art is simply in its most simplest form a structured feelings we all have feelings at one time though the notion of a black man having feelings were denied feelings will be learned to take those feelings and to construct them to put them together then we can enter the rim of art if we want to polish it forward into politics that's available too out of feelings I can take it make art out of it I can also take it and make a politic money out of it I believe that politics come out of feelings I had a beautiful experience once I live both the olive of Crete and Greece have been there for 44 years 45 years now we have a mountain in Crete we call it Mount Ida we have Silicis the angels claim that's where Zeus was born we have a cave there I wanted to see that cave now I'm not talking on a hill I'm talking on a mountain so 19 the year was 1970 I said hello I want to walk to the top of the mountain I want to see Zeus so I hired a guy another buddy I had in Canada my wife Mary and I we had a guy go to Zeus the guy was a whole Crete when I say Crete I'm not talking about a regular Crete I'm talking about a Crete these people are warriors the island of Crete the history is warfare this man had fought in the resistance he had fought the Germans you would get to a spot a cave or something if you look at me I've got one right there right at that spot it was a marvelous trip we were approaching the summit I've never been so exhausted in my life reaching the top Crete we call it you can see the whole island the sun was bright the colors were amazing it was like being on a mescaline high so bright this man looked at me he says look at this look how beautiful this is look at that look at the sea, look at the mountain look at those colors out there he was just as static his arms were up in the air waiting and right behind him he said to me I will kill for this a light went off in my head I said oh my god an experience in the beginning of the political coming out of aesthetics here we have nature this most glorious one he says to me I will kill for this kind of experience it teaches you a lot it really does and being an artist becomes the basis of what I do I know that now in that paint that's what I want that's why they can be used for something the hardest thing for me in New York sitting in 1968 at the height of the civil rights movement I'm looking at people getting killed down in my hometown I'm looking at Newark I'm looking at Watts Vietnam War horrific the hardest thing for me at that period was staying in the studio that was the most difficult thing to listen to I ran into George Siegel one day I used to talk to Siegel the United States and Russia was neck to neck about to pull the trigger on the bomb me, young kids we were freaking out we were getting high in the junk to help with it tomorrow I'll be dead anyway people were crying people were shooting up I remember one young lady just freaking out George came in and said to us he says you're all crazy go back to the studios and work he says if the bullet trigger is going to happen anyway go work he said that's what George Siegel told me thanks Jack I went back to the studio and worked I'm still in the studio we'd like to open up the floor now to questions from the audience for any of our panelists for microphones on either side in the aisle we ask you to go there and please ask questions my name is Claire Beckman and I just want to say thank you so much this has been incredible to listen to this is a question for anyone who wants to answer my daughter was recently accepted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and I've been really surprised and sort of horrified by some of the reactions that I get from people most I'm in the theater and most of the people that I know are very happy for her but some people are worried that she's going into the arts you know and I'm worried that there's so much there's so little enthusiasm for a young person taking that step going in that direction what would you say to me as a parent about the future of art in this country in general and how a young girl who is smart and compassionate and cares about social justice how do I encourage her I think I could just say something you can send her to me I recently accepted a position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I think what I want to contribute to the discourse there is art and social justice and pushing students to really realize that we're more than artists we are public intellectuals we are the people that can move in and out of different positions and speak to things that we know are abuses in our society you know that's the way I see my responsibility as an artist and as a citizen in this country and I think that the generation that's coming up now is in a precarious position because of technology and the fact that there's a lot of historical amnesia a lot of apathy a lot of ego and arrogance and less people consciousness being concerned with reality and we can see in this exhibition here how important that really is to step up and contribute to the legacies and the ways that this country has evolved in a way that the things have remained the same and so I think you should encourage her to find her voice and to find the right medium to speak through to society but you could certainly send her over and I would love to plant some seeds in her someone else question for Bruce Davidson you were saying her photos are more reflection of yourself than having trouble hearing oh I can talk about it just speak a little louder please yeah you were saying how your photos are reflection of you as a person and I was wondering if if you went back to the 60s now or if you were the age that you are now if you would have taken all different photos or if you think that you would have the same photos that you took it was 25 years old now if you were to go back to the south at your age now do you think the pictures you would take if you could transpose but I think you're saying you could transpose yourself now back to that moment but with the wisdom you have at present would your photos be different I don't think so I think that I would find in the south for instance certain aspects of the way it was 30 or 40 years ago there still are bigots in Mississippi and I've experienced this a couple of times where I was with a group and someone at the other end of the room came over and said no that's not right that's I belong to the clan you know it's there the monster is still there you know and you can't be fooled if you check into a good hotel or motel there will be African Americans behind the desk but there still is remnants of the old south in the new south does that answer your question I'll tell you one thing I I work in series I need to go into a world and explore it right now I'm having a time of my life I'm photographing almost every day in the museum of natural history where none of the subjects can get me and I can transform them I'm God to them I can't be dead but I'm God and I can't wait to go back and explore death making it come alive so I'm still they're still lead in the pencil it's the way I live the way I live and as a matter of fact my solo too personal but all of my family are involved with photography in one way or another I have a daughter who is an activist spent 10 years in Cuba over 10 years and having that work published now after all these years finally found the right publisher so I have another daughter as a painter and my wife just completed a book on the leader of the Brooklyn gang and took her 8 years so it's all part of the way we live so you don't have a problem you just have a camera and walk around that's what I would suggest to you one more question anyone? thank you for this wonderful panel I want to say I'm so proud to see Latoya and Abigail up there not only are they friends of mine but it's interesting to see how in the panel it has evolved in the way that now the younger generation are represented by two women so my question is specifically to Abigail Latoya if you could speak a bit about how your position as young women of African descent has shaped your experiences not necessarily with regards to the art but how your art is received like do you find any resistance because I know Latoya you mentioned earlier that asking why are you doing this type of art and do you find the fact that you're young women of color if that adds a dimension to the resistance that you experience it's been hard just to speak frankly and truthfully it's been very hard when I set out to make the notion of family and this book is coming out with Abasher Foundation this coming fall when I set out to make that work it was an image that I saw that gave me the understanding of the power of documentary and photography and it was Gordon Park's image of Ella Watson holding that broom in front of the American flag I knew by looking at that there was dignity and humanity there and Park saw that dignity and humanity and preserved it but there was also that underlying narrative and fact that no matter how hard she worked or what she gave she would always be devalued and invisible and she would never have the upward mobility and you know that would limit her social and economic progress once you pick up a camera or any tool and you start to speak towards poverty poor people under-recognized under-represented people there is automatically a blacklist thing in resentment towards you for doing it there is you know complicated racist terrains it's one of the most gender biased terrains I have worked really hard to get my work in collections and to be taken seriously and there's been resistance on a class level upper class people who don't think my work should be in these institutions we have fought diligently to see ourselves in these museums if you can't see yourself I'm always being told about an elite white person or an international person I think it's very necessary for me and Abigail to be present and to keep pushing our work into these arenas because we need that I need to be able to go into a museum and see a reflection of my culture in my class I've always been really excited about Abigail's work I mean I've been documenting Abigail's work since we met at Skowhegan in 2007 and to tie this back into Ella Watson the image of her in front of that flag Abigail has been making these amazing flag paintings in Tampa streets and what struck me about Abigail's work in particular can you tell me the title of the piece your grandmother was lottery cards 449 and you were making that at Skowhegan I just it touched me and resonated with me on so many levels I am a person working with representational images of bodies and people in reality but Abigail was saying the same thing through materials and through these lottery tickets and her grandmother's invisibility in her living and those projects in the Bronx all those years and her family's history there and that's also what this panel is interesting because you have Bruce you have Mark and you have Jack and across it we're all grappling with these human issues and social justice but on the one hand it's through an image on the other hand it's through material and there was a beautiful quote in the exhibition by John Outeridge what is available to you is not new material but the material and the essence of the political climate the material and the debris of social issues I saw that and I said come and see this this is so you when we saw Jack Witton's piece Abigail has spent a lot of time thinking about invisibility, invisible man as well as two boys and you know it's been a tremendous and wonderful experience to grow with Abigail coming out of an art residency our kids are clueless about the art world of the market and how we position ourselves to grow into where we are today and I'm thankful that I have influenced my work and that we continue to push each other and make sure that we're here but I mean you can respond I mean she did it all but just to jump on that material thing there was the painting that was talking about I collected my grandmother's a lot of tickets over maybe a two year period and I held on so I didn't know what to do with them and that's the first number that she hit and she was like lifelong hooked after that 50 cent box all that but I think that there's enough information within the material that you find in life day to day bastardized materials I collected her cigarette boats and made a painting but to think about within that material has a whole history besides social history economic history and the things that people have access made readily available to them but then there also the relationship to that material where the fact that she pulled on those cigarettes and so that a part in the essence of her was trapped and left within that material so that I can make a record of my grandmother's existence with something that she breathes from or breathes through just thinking about the power of materialized and archeological like evidence of a life lived thank you thanks everyone for being with us and please stay tuned for our second round table which will start in 15 minutes