Triad: Looking Close at Three New Acquisitions
During the last four years, the Center for Creative Photography created a process and funding source for diversifying our collection. We began by analyzing existing holdings, determined strengths, and identified where underrepresented artists and gaps in the collection existed. It was clear that there were many perspectives, as well as a range of contemporary voices, not represented in our holdings. Through three auctions of duplicate holdings in our collection, the Center funded an endowment which is being used to purchase work to diversify the collection. This exhibition of new acquisitions presents three rotations of three artworks each and serves as our first opportunity to share these new works with our community.
Triad: Looking Close at Three New Acquisitions offers a concentrated opportunity for visitors to know some of the Center’s newest works. Each photograph is shared along with an observation from a member of the CCP staff and student staff, and a statement from the artist. Our intention is to open a valuable space for contemplation, close looking, and reflection with singular works of art. Designed to be an evolving exhibition, we will reinstall in February and March, sharing three new prints each time. Tapping into the global slow art movement that promotes quality experiences with art, we share prompts to support extended exploration of each work in the gallery. Visitors are invited to share their experience by posting to social media and tagging #CCPSlowArt or adding their comment on an in-gallery Slow Art wall.
Witness series by photojournalist Terrell Groggins work explored social consciousness in Detroit, Mi The year was 2016 The year when a shift in coverage of police brutality shook the nation. In 2016, a police officer named Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile. Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, turned on her Facebook Live seconds later and captured her dying boyfriend's final moments while her four-year-old daughter watched from the backseat. What happened next has become a routine in the US. The broadcast went viral. Castile's name became a hashtag. Protesters hit the streets all over the country. “The unnecessary excessive use of force practiced by certain police officers should not be seen, taken, or treated as institutionalized police policies. It is, however, a deep-rooted challenge that must be addressed openly and effectively,” From the beginning, discrimination was institutionalized in political and economic spaces. The need to inflict forced labor on Black lives after slavery was the main objective for the original police force in the South. This is where force was ingrained into police tactics, as hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan merged with the system. Generation after generation, new rules were put into place specifically to target the Black population, including segregation, incarceration, voter suppression, redlining lack of government assistance, and economic infrastructure. Statistically, in reported incidents alone, Black people’s experiences with the criminal justice system have always been vastly different from those of other groups.
2016 also was the year when the billionaire businessman who never before held elected office shocked America and the world, defeating Hillary Clinton in an extraordinary rebuke to the nation’s political class after an ugly and divisive race that will go down as the most stunning upset in American history. Trump did so decisively, stomping across the electoral map with wins in the four biggest battlegrounds of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He defied the polls and pundits after a scorched-earth campaign against Clinton, the Republican establishment, and basic decorum, toppling the blue wall of states that Clinton had supposedly constructed to keep the White House in Democratic hands. Trump led an unseen rebellion of working-class voters, most of them white and so disgusted by a stalled status quo that they voted for a candidate promising dramatic change, even as Trump set disapproval records for a winning candidate. He also tapped into ethnic antagonism, vowing strict immigration controls, a ban on Muslims, and a deportation force, promising an era of restoration.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump declared. Terrell’s series “ Witness” series takes place in Detroit, it’s a small sample size of the state of the social consciousness across the broader picture of America. This project turned a critical eye on the U.S at a time of great social, political, and cultural change, and examined key events in 2016 leading up to Trump’s inauguration.
Lastly but most importantly for the city of Detroit a protest in 2016 there was an organized teacher “sickout” that forced nearly all of Detroit’s public schools to stay closed after the system’s chief manager said that without more money from the state, he would be unable to pay teachers the salaries they are owed in July and August and summer school would be canceled. Teachers have staged other major sickouts this year, calling for teachers to call in sick, organized by their union, the 2,600-member Detroit Federation of Teachers, in a sign of how the crisis in Detroit Public Schools is escalating. Protesters spoke of ceiling tiles falling on students' heads among deplorable conditions as well as classrooms overloaded with students. They waved signs and at times were joined by others protesting Flint's water crisis and other issues. Many demanded the ouster of Gov. Rick Snyder.
