Working with materials dating back to the 19th century, artist Alayna Pernell digs into institutional archives to examine how Black identity is often erased, and how care extends to both images and individuals.

An MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pernell’s research-based project began at home. Her family maintains a visual archive - everything from stately studio portraits to candid snapshots of life’s milestone moments - that reaches back to the 19th century. Such photographic continuity encapsulates a desire for familial and community connections that, for far too many Black Americans, was interrupted by the horrors that unfolded during Reconstruction and after.

Quoted in a 2019 smithsonianmag.org piece, author Laura Coyle elegantly sums it up: “For the African American community, photography was particularly important, because when they were in control of the camera, they had a chance to shape their own image for themselves, for their community and for the outside world in a way they normally didn’t have a chance to do in society.”

Our Mothers’ Gardens addresses representation and erasure within an institutional context. Pernell’s search for photographs of Black women in collections held by the Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Photography reveals the terms under which such images were collected, and how frequently the images do not include sitters’ basic identifying information.

Pernell cannot correct that shameful, all-too-familiar erasure. But, physical intervention – the way her hands frame and shield the figures – reads as a protective and loving gesture for those unnamed ancestors.

I contacted Alayna after seeing her shared via @saicphotography as she was awarded the 2020-2021 James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. Read on to learn more about looking at her family archives, and how that influences notions of photographic representation and care for Black women.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Alayna Pernell