Making History Visible: The Practice of Remembering

Throughout my work creating collages, and scouring the web for meaningful art, I have found thousands of images of unidentified Black people. These photos of Black women, children, men, and their families, are all with unknown origins. The archives show blank faces that stare at the camera, remaining still because the slightest move will ruin their costly photos. The people photographed are often Black elites wearing delicate lace and impressive embroidery on their clothes. Although there is rarely  a smile, pride emanates from the photographs. Still, a haunting behind their eyes is present. Something unsaid, unseen, unheard. Initially, I wanted to look away. I do not know the context or fullness of their lives. Their stories, their lives, and the intricacies of their personhood are all tucked away under the gaudy golden frames of the photographs.

Staring into the past  breaks me, reminding me of the spectacle of Black pain and sorrow this country was built on. The knowledge of the haunting stares of  Black people being consumed across time and space, from Emmett Till to George Floyd, sits deep in my chest. I take a step back and recenter our history, our ancestors and myself. I breathe. Dressed in their Sunday best, their hair beautifully coiffed, collars pressed, their static poses show the departed with dignity. Even the photos of the children are marred with the knowledge that they have already passed. Perhaps that is why these images haunt me, the knowledge that the subject is lost. Their bodies are buried along with their memories. Memories that I will never know. Memories most don’t care to think about or honor.

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The worst, most prominent, wide spread photographs depict servitude and bondage. images of Black women unilluminated next to the stark pale face of a white child, the nurse and the babe, the mammy.  White history has long relied on reducing Black individuals to the background, objects to be seen but not noticed. But reclamation is a powerful tool and with it, I turn towards other Black women scholars, activists, ancestors, and family members. In Dr. Christina Sharpe’s book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, she reminds us that “living in the wake means living the history and present of terror, from slavery to the present, as the ground of our everyday Black existence; living the historically and geographically dis/continuous but always present and endlessly reinvigorated brutality in, and on, our bodies while even as that terror is visited on our bodies the realities of that terror are erased.”

The terror, pain, and sorrow that reverberates through time is seen in these photos and the photos of Black men and women who have been lost to state sanctioned violence. Entangled in the archive is the living history of hate, white supremacy and premature death. To paraphrase from Saidiya Hartman’s work, we are traversing through the afterlives of enslavement. We cannot disentangle the history of white supremacist anti-Black violence from the current moment we live in. The terror of the plantation reverberates through time. The lynching mobs did not disappear, instead they transformed. Our archives are tainted with the blood of our ancestors that we cannot see or truly know.

Nevertheless, I cannot stop staring at the faces in the photos; I cannot stop trying to place them in our memories. To remember is to know, and our people deserve to be known, to be missed. I cannot undo the harm that was done, but I can remember, and I can hold those faces as I move forward. There is immense joy, power and resilience in remembering. Black Archives, a project founded in 2015 by Renata Cherlise, is that our past is not just trauma and pain. It is also full of love, joy, beauty and culture. When I look at photos from that archive, I see Black people smiling, laughing, full of color and light. Fashion, intimacy, family, and fun reverberate throughout the site, with its street photography showing the nuance and diversity of Black people’s lives.  Inspired, I take photos of Black people, that capture their beauty and fullness. Black people deserve futures and the ability to look back and remember that our lives are exuberant, radiant, and contain multitudes. Even as the world burns, I want photos of laughter and joy, not cryptic triptychs and daguerreotypes of an unknown past. I hope they know who we are and remember us kindly.

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Knowing and remembering is a haunting skill that must be practiced. We have a history of forgetting or being forgotten. We have a past that we try to fit together, but there are so many missing puzzle pieces. The past, our past, will never truly be known. As I piece together small chunks of history, I must remember the untold stories of the unidentified African-American. Making history visible is no easy task, but it is something we must all commit to doing together. We don’t have to work in archives or visit museums to remember. We can ask our families, our friends, our community members, and loved ones: What was it like when you grew up? Do you have any photos I can see? How did you find and create joy in your community? What can I learn from you? When we ask these questions we commit to knowing each other and building a just future where we can all breathe easy. We are only on this planet for so long and together we must work towards building a future where Black people are known, seen, and loved.

Audre Smikle is a multidisciplinary artist that has worked on projects that scrutinized institutional whiteness and racial capitalism through the lens of Black Marxism and Black feminist theory. She endeavors to live up to her namesake, Audre Lorde, by dedicating her life to activism, art and scholarly investigations of systemic racism and misogynoir. Her art uses themes of Afrofuturism, Black Liberation. In her artwork, collages, and musings she features activist artwork and archival work to create dynamic conversations between the reader, images, and graphics. Dedicated to both racial justice and climate justice, Audre spends her free time volunteering, creating art, and healing both the earth and her community.