Been Seen: The Photography of Zora J Murff

“I am sending up this collection of photographs as affirmations for us, Black people, during this crisis of white guilt; my self-portrait of now serves as a reminder that we have always possessed the legitimacy to determine our own successes. What many institutions have failed—and continue to fail—to realize is that we will always excel despite exclusion. If change requires reckoning with hard truths, can institutions learn how to subvert themselves to create a truly just future?” —Zora J Murff in the New York Times

Join the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the first of a series of conversations about the gaze of Black photographers who explore and celebrate Black life. In Zora J Murff’s latest monograph, True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis), he addresses the act of remembering and the politics of self which Murff identifies as “the duality of Black patriotism and the challenges of finding belonging in places not made for me—of creating an affirmation in a moment of crisis as I learn to remake myself in my own image.”

Zora J Murff is the recipient of the 2020 Aperture-Baxter St Next Step Award, made possible by the generous support of 7|G Foundation.

Zora J Murff (born in Des Moines, Iowa, 1987) is assistant professor of photography at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. In 2019, Murff was named an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist, a PDN 30 honoree, and a Light Work Artist-in-Residence; he was one of eight artists chosen for the most recent iteration of the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography series, Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020. Murff’s books include Corrections (2015); LOST, Omaha (2018); and At No Point In Between (2019). His work was presented at the 2021 Rencontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award.

This program will be streamed on Livestream.com and simulcast to YouTube. You must register with your email address in order to receive the link to participate. Please check your email shortly before the discussion to receive the link.

Image: Zora J Murff, American Mother, 2019, from True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) (Aperture, 2021). © Zora J Murff, courtesy the artist and Webber Gallery, London