Date: Feb 23, 2018 - May 5, 2018
GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION
Beneath These Restless Skies
Opening Reception with Photographer Harriet Dedman
2017 Gordon Parks Fellowship recipient
Friday, February 23 from 6 – 7:30pm
Pleasantville, New York – The Gordon Parks Foundation
announces the upcoming exhibition of photographs Beneath These Restless Skies, by British documentary photographer and 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow Harriet Dedman. The exhibition, which explores issues of identity and opportunity in West Harlem, will be on view at the Foundation’s exhibition space from February 23 through May 4, 2018
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Beneath These Restless Skies tracks the life of 24-year-old Trevor Brown and his wider generation: disenfranchised, with limited social mobility and meager opportunities to move beyond an education secured in a post affirmative action era. Dedman’s work is inspired by Gordon Parks’ Civil Rights-era photo essay about the Fontenelle family that appeared in LIFE magazine 50 years prior. Through the project, and over the course of two years, she immersed herself in the lives of the Brown family who live along the same stretch of 123rd Street as the Fontenelles and face many of the same enduring hardships—poverty, unemployment and racism.
Dedman said, “This is a series about identity and stereotypes, profiles and profiling, and a generation of young men lost in the wake of marching change–50 years after Gordon Parks.”
Dedman’s exhibit will allow viewers to interact with the Browns’ story through photographs, archival maps, video, and audio. The artist worked with Empathetic Media to create an immersive virtual reality experience using 360 video, 3D scans of environments and characters, audio interviews, archival video and photography by both Dedman and Parks. The VR experience will debut at the February 23 opening reception where patrons will be invited to explore Trevor’s world.
Harriet Dedman was awarded the inaugural 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship for her ongoing photography series in Harlem, “highlighting the humanity and creative spirit of Gordon Parks.”
Harriet Dedman
Harriet Dedman is an award-winning British documentary photographer and filmmaker, based in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been published by multiple outlets, including the BBC, HBO, Smithsonian, CNN, Slate and the Financial Times. A former lawyer, Harriet holds a degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford and is a graduate of Columbia’s Journalism School.
The Gordon Parks Foundation
48 Wheeler Avenue, 3rd Floor
Pleasantville, New York, 10570
Tel: (914) 238-2619
Photo copyright Harriet Dedman
