Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom (@FashioningSelf) / X

Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom

1,936 posts

Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom

@FashioningSelf

Celebrating black fashion and visual culture

Parsons School of Design

linktr.ee/fashioningthes…

Joined June 2016

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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jul 20, 2021
I couldn’t think of two better positions to make my next career move!
Jonathan M. Square
@stylesquared
Jul 20, 2021
Meet the newest Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at @parsonsdesign. During my first year at Parsons, I will hold a joint appointment as a Fellow in History of Art and Visual Culture at the Costume Institute at the @metmuseum.
Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jan 31, 2024
Black and brown employees often labor in art spaces as docents, safeguarding artworks while providing guidance and answering the questions of museum patrons. They are central to the functioning of museums, but their presences are overlooked and their contributions to our
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
May 7, 2024
British Formula 1 driver @LewisHamilton's Met Gala @Burberry look was inspired by the story of John Ystumllyn, one of Britain’s first black gardeners, and the symbolic language of flowers in black history. John Ystumllyn was an 18th-century gardener and is considered the first
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Sep 21, 2023
This painting, titled "Portrait of a Young Lady, a Free Person of Colour," was created by the Swiss portraitist Jean Baptiste Bonjour in 1852. It captures the grace and pared-down elegance of a young black girl in a emerald green gown. Bonjour was known to have only worked in
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Mar 9, 2023
Slavery was rooted in violence and intimacy. The children of enslavers and the enslaved sometimes grew up in the same households with minimal social distance. Affective bonds developed alongside the constant threat of violence and separation from kith and kin. Last weekend, I
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jul 21, 2023
We unfortunately do not know the name of the African American couple (or siblings?) in this collodion print. The young lady is wearing a silk damask dress; the young man is also wearing a new morning coat with his silk tie. Based on the photographer's embossed branding, we know
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jul 26, 2023
UPDATE: The man in this photo is Joseph Wesley "Wes" Grant. The woman beside Wes is probably one of his sisters. Wes's parents, Thomas and Patsy, moved to Missouri from Kentucky after Thomas served in the Union during the Civil War, where they raised their family (and where this
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jun 1, 2023
Though I could focus my analysis on the young woman's madras headwrap or pelerine, since I more often focus on the dress of enslaved people in archival photos. What captivates my attention the most is her intense gaze, searing with a mixture of anger and disgust. In the early
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Feb 22, 2024
The work of lesser-known artist Laura Wheeling Waring takes center stage in The Harlem Renaissance and Transnational Modernism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite not being the most well-known figure today, Waring was the leading black female portraitist during the peak of
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jun 24, 2024
This photograph is one of the most important images of the twentieth century, capturing a poignant moment in American history. Taken by the renowned African American photographer Gordon Parks in 1956, it depicts a fashionably dressed African American mother and daughter standing
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jun 15, 2023
This is a photograph of an Emancipation Day celebration on June 19, 1900 in Eastwoods Park in Austin, Texas. A group of six well-dressed formerly enslaved individuals stand proudly before the photographer Grace Murray Stephenson, a young, white woman who lived nearby. Her
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Jul 27, 2023
This candid photo was taken around 1905 and captures a casual embrace between two unidentified black women in what seems to be a forest or orchard. It is archived in the Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs. Handwriting on the back indicates their names as
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Oct 3, 2023
This portrait depicts a young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was born in London in 1875 to a white British mother and a Krio father from Sierra Leone. At age seven, he sat for several painters at the Croydon Art Club. Here he is depicted wearing a cap and tunic, although it's worth
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Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom
@FashioningSelf
Nov 15, 2021
Harriet Powers is considered the mother of African American story quilt tradition. She was born enslaved in 1837 near Athens, Georgia. Two of her surviving quilts are now on display together for the first time at the "Fabric of a Nation" show at the @mfaboston.