Alexander Newman

In Rapture

In Rapture, so named for the rapture with which we hold our ancestors who came before us, explores history and identity through large-scale styled portraits and narrative photography. Our work seeks to access the ancestral world and repair ruptures to our ancestral lines caused by the interwoven histories of colonialism and capitalism. We examine ancestral connections to geographic sites in a world impacted by the forced and voluntary migrations that took place under colonialism. An important part of our project is to create a photographic portraiture of people of color that avoids visual strategies which partake in the histories of visual violence deeply intertwined in the history of photography, specifically its role in maintaining colonial modes of power. These modes, which center on the body, reify race as a biological or scientific reality thus erasing the complexities of a lived existence. Our work ties together the process of reconciling our ancestral history with the present moment, the marshalling of religious imagery and images of divinity from classical painting, and the creation of a space that is simultaneously real and otherworldly.

Photographer

Alexander Newman

Alexander Newman was born in Oshawa, Canada to Jamaican parents and spent his childhood moving between locations in the Northeastern United States, China, and the Midwest. He graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a BFA in Photography in 2017, and has since relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he currently lives and works. His work is heavily influenced by the power of the geographic site. Diasporic identities, the uncanny nature of modernized landscapes, and the presence of ancestral power in physical space are all elements which inform his practice. As a visual artist who works primarily with film photography, he sees this medium as a tool to create a complete and infinite observation of space, a process which allows one to pass through a deeply layered present, informed by both memory and spiritual power. He is a part of an artistic collective, In Rapture, where he is the principal photographer, and his sister, Dr. Rachel Grace Newman, is the creative director. His artwork has been featured in internationally circulated publications, as well as in exhibitions in Europe and North America.

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