Join us on Saturday, March 30 at 2 p.m. for a presentation on the “killed negatives” of the Farm Security Administration’s photos of the Great Depression. The program will be part call-and-response and part meditation based on the book, “Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse By Quraysh Ali Lansana and Joel Daniel Phillips.”
The book is available for purchase here.
Details
Saturday, March 30
2-3 p.m.
Woody Guthrie Center
102 E. Reconciliation Way, Tulsa, OK 74103
Tickets
Tickets are free with paid admission on the day of the event.
About “Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse”
There are many kinds of time in a photograph, just as in a poem… As for the black shot dots, we crumple them up and when we build a fire for dinner, we burn them, asking that anything that would endanger us be put away from us. Then we sing a song of protection and love.
from Blueberry Picking by Joy Harjo
If art is an imitation of life, as the saying goes, then how does one define art intended to document grim reality? If the brutal, often stark real life is present, is this art? Is truth telling in the eye of the beholder, or would some consider it “fake news?” Who or what is controlling the narrative and to what ends?
While looking through Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs from the Great Depression, visual artist Joel Daniel Phillips stumbled upon a haunting image—a 1936 photograph by Walker Evans with a gaping black hole in the center. This chance discovery of a “killed negative” led Phillips and poet Quraysh Ali Lansana into a multi-year collaborative project: Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse. Part meditation and part call-and-response, the project is an ekphrastic rejoinder to FSA Director Roy Stryker’s little-known practice of destroying the photographs he found unappealing—exploring complex intersections of representation, truth, and power.
Introductory Essays by Susan Green, Marcia Manhart Endowed Associate Curator for Contemporary Art & Design at the Philbrook Museum of Art and Erica X. Eisen.
Contributing Poets: U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, Randall Horton, Rose McLarney, Ken Hada, Moheb Soliman and Candace G. Wiley.
About Joel Daniel Phillips
Joel Daniel Phillips is an American artist whose work focuses on the idea of portraiture as a radical act of em- pathetic connection. Inspired by the depth and breadth of human experience, he strives to explore the personal and societal histories etched in the world around him. Through the tip of a pencil and the bristles of a paintbrush, his portraits examine questions of truth, power, historical amnesia, and the veracity of the stories we tell ourselves about our collective pasts. Phillips’ practice is centered on the belief that portraiture can be a kind of magic: In the face of immense difficulty, it somehow holds the power to connect us, building emotional bridges between humans across chasms of time, distance and individual experience.
Phillips actively exhibits his work across the United States and abroad. His drawings and paintings have been shown at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tacoma Art Museum, Art Museum of South Texas, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Gilcrease Museum, Ackland Art Museum and many others. His work has been selected for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Com- petition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for the past three concurrent exhibitions (2016, 2019 and 2022), at which he received 3rd prize in 2016 and Honorable Mention in 2022. Phillips works can be found in the public collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Philbrook Museum of Art, Phillips Collection, Ackland Art Museum, Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art, West Collection, Gilcrease Museum, 21c Museum Hotels, Crocker Art Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum. He is currently a Fellow at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
About Quraysh Ali Lansana
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody Award nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include Opal’s Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams: new and collected poems, 1995-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Forthcoming titles include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse, with Joel Daniel Phillips, a children’s biography of Ralph Ellison, and a series of books on the Black Rodeo. Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art and Oklahoma Humanities, is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.
About Ken Hada
Ken Hada lives and writes in the Cross Timbers of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. Much of his writing is grounded in the ecology of place, seeking the rhythms of the natural order. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including his two latest: Come Before Winter (Turning Plow Press, 2023), just named finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, and Contour Feathers (Turning Plow Press 2021), winner of that award. Six additional titles have also been named finalist. His Spare Parts received the Wrangler Award from the National Western Heritage Museum. His work received the 2017 SCMLA Poetry Prize, and he was a finalist for the Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Four of his poems have been featured on NPR’s program “The Writer’s Almanac.” In addition to his poetry, Ken remains active in scholarship, writing and publishing regularly on regional writing, literary ecology and multicultural literatures. He is a professor at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, where, for nineteen years, he has directed the annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival. More information at: kenhada.org.
