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Meditation # 2, from the series, A Tribute on the Water by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Brooklyn, New York, 2022, Digital C-Print, Print Size: 12×18 inches, Framed: 16 x 22 inches
Every second Saturday in June, we gather on Coney Island beach. It is a day designated to collectively memorialize our ancestors. We remember the lives of the Africans in bondage who perished during the brutal voyage crossing the Atlantic Ocean during the time of slavery. Since 1989, this gathering has been a Brooklyn tradition. The Tribute of the Ancestors of the Middle Passage, as it is known locally, is an interfaith communion that goes from noon to sundown. During the day, there is poetry, prayer, dancing, and drumming on the boardwalk. A little before sunset, there is a spirited procession to the water. People bring flowers, honey, rum, and fruit as an offering. As a person of African descent, I’ve always felt especially fortunate to collectively grieve this critical moment in world history where the course of our lives, lineage, and cultures were permanently altered.
As a documentary and portrait photographer, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn focuses her inquiries on the cultures and identities within the global Black diaspora with a special interest in memory. Her practice, spanning 20 years, includes exhibition organizing and essay writing. She is frequently on assignment for The New York Times and has been commissioned by The Guardian, Le Monde, National Geographic, NPR, Vogue, and The New Yorker. Barrayn’s monograph, We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits, was published with the support of the Magnum Foundation in 2023. She is also co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, the first anthology in nearly 30 years that highlights photography produced by women of African descent. She is currently the guest curator for the 2023-24 academic year at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery at Harvard University. A native of Brooklyn, New York, her work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Open Society Foundation, and The International Women’s Media Foundation. She holds an M.A. in Art and Public Policy from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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