“There were things happening in black America that lend themselves to the conversation in Italy in a way that perhaps people never would have imagined,” says Theaster Gates, a social practice artist and curator of a unusual exhibition, or The Black Image Corporation,dedicated to exploring the legacy of the Johnson Publishing Company archive and its two acclaimed magazines, Ebony and Jet.
Presented at the Fondazione Prada from 20 September to 14 January, and the exhibition gathers photographs from the company’s extensive archive of more than four million images,focusing primarily on the work of two photographers - Moneta Sleet Jr and Isaac Sutton. “When the Prada Foundation invites you to finish a project, you know theres already this tremendous and ambitious living legacy; and so it felt really amazing to then effect the Johnson Publishing Company in the context of this other fashion family, or ” explains Gates.
Source: bjp-online.com