No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper by Tokie Rome Taylor

No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper by Tokie Rome Taylor, 2022, Cynotype on cotton, variable edition, 34 x 24 inches

I am an Atlanta, GA-based photographer, interested in ethnography, identity, and representation. My multimedia practice is grounded in the understanding that one’s self-perception and sense of belonging in a society begins in childhood. Children are the subjects I use to speak of a sense of belonging. These images of Black and brown children re-examine history and tradition, through photographic portraits that counter the propaganda of inaccurate stereotypical, subjugated, and inferior historical depiction of people of color. They represent a visual elevation that had been omitted from mainstream “Western history”. Questions that stem from ethnographic and historical research that probe material, spiritual, and familial culture of ancestral descendants of southern slaves are entry points for me to build symbolic elements that communicate a visual language within my work. My work positions black bodies in a space that leans into the past, reaching back to address the erasure of worth in how black bodies are perceived and represented. These traditions that we were able to preserve- such as the passing down of objects, making offerings to ancestors, and the use of material objects as spiritual devices, allow the resurrection of power and autonomy once denied. My work stands in direct defiance of that erasure. Denied access to traditional materials and practice in the Americas, a creolization of symbolic elements of European status and wealth has been utilized to visually connect to the ancestral practice of adornment and spirituality. I make no attempt to recreate the past, but rather to create images that combine elevation and connection to diasporic practice. They stand strong, weaving together adopted Western trappings of wealth and status with symbolic representations of their cultural, historical, and spiritual connections.