Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nikole Hannah-Jones is inspired by Black people.
“I do have hope in us,” she said during a conversation via Zoom. “We [African Americans] should not be here. We should not have even accomplished all that we have. We serve as inspiration for oppressed people all across the globe.”
The decorated journalist has just released her latest project, “The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience,” a photobook that consists of original essays from “The 1619 Project” and is also brimming with gripping images and visual art that depict Black life, struggle, and most importantly, survival. The book has vivid imagery: archival photos, portraits and 13 original commissioned works by Black artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell and Xaviera Simmons.
Since childhood, Hannah-Jones has understood the transformative power of the written word. But visual art, she said, is different. This art is to be experienced; it is a journey.
Hannah-Jones said that within the American context, art has also played a part in Black erasure, with its failure to represent Black people. In America, art has also created a warped perception of Black communities. For example, popular art of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as greeting cards or advertising labels, perpetuated racist images of Blackface minstrelsy. This damning stereotype of Black people would continue on for centuries. But through its use of visual art by Black artists, “The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience” defies this tale.
“The inherent power of Black visual art is the ability to shape for ourselves how we are seen, how we are remembered, what culture looks like from us, from the inside,” she said. “It takes back that image and allows us to create our own image for ourselves and to see ourselves more truly, and then to imagine different futures outside of the constraints of white supremacy and outside of the constraints of the white gaze and the white imagination. But for us to assert our own humanity in our own way.”
Indeed, Hannah-Jones’ acclaimed work, “The 1619 Project,” has evolved in form since it was first published in The New York Times magazine in August 2019, encompassing an expanded book, children’s book, podcast and Emmy-winning docuseries.
The journalist said Black art has always been political — from the mundane to the extraordinary. She also referred to “The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience” as memory work.
“It is trying to…
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