Photo Journal Monday: Johnnie Chatman

Self-portrait, Monument Valley © Johnnie Chatman

All text and Images by Johnnie Chatman

With my series of self-portraits, I forgot where we were… I construct an archive and body of imagery that explores ideas and notions around landscape and its relationship with black history. This chapter explores the American West which has often been defined by binary and reductionist grids of thought and iconography. Like the black body, the West is a complex, unstable signifier given meaning by those who have lived within it, passed through it, conquered it, settled, farmed, militarized, urbanized, and dreamed it.

Self-portrait, Great Sand Dunes (South) © Johnnie Chatman

This portion of the series explores how vantage points across the West act as beacons for explorations of culture, history, and consumerism, as histories have been compressed into marketable cultural capital for international gazers. In pursuing this route the project explores the ambiguity and multiplicity of blackness oscillating between a space of romance and critique, objective research, and personal narrative. The project will continue until I have created a portrait in every state.

Self-portrait, Waterhole Canyon © Johnnie Chatman

Self-Portrait, Rhyolite © Johnnie Chatman

Self-portrait, Badwater Basin © Johnnie Chatman

Check out Chatman’s website to see more of his works.