Resquícios e Ressonância | Remnants and Resonance

In flashes of memory, the reflection of Black existence is powerfully illuminated.
Joshua Rashaad McFadden | Thomas Allen Harris | Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos
Exhibition on view February 7 - March 1, 2025

Film screening:
Through A Lens Darkly (dir. Thomas Allen Harris, 2014, 1 hour 33 minutes)
Wednesday, February 19, 5:00 pm
Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Room 1125 (Carlson Auditorium)
Introduced by Joshua Rashaad McFadden, this award-winning film explores how African American communities have used the camera as a tool for social change from the invention of photography to the present. Virtual Q&A with Director Thomas Allen Harris to follow.
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Artist Talk & Panel Discussion:
Joshua Rashaad McFadden, Thomas Allen Harris, and Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos
Wednesday, February 26, 6:30 pm
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030
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Guest Lecture & Panel Discussion:
Elson Rabelo, Associate Professor, Universidade Federal do Vale do Sao Francisco
Panelists: Elson de Assis Rabelo, Danielle Freire de Souza Santos, José Carlos Ferreira dos Santos Filho
Thursday, February 27, 5:00 pm
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030
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About the exhibition:

Resquícios e Ressonância | Remnants and Resonance brings together three powerful works created in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, each exploring the enduring legacies of Black identity and memory through the transformative power of portraiture. The title evokes fragments, traces, and residues—remnants that speak to the ghostly presence of history, the resonance of ancestral memory, and the echoes of fragmented narratives captured in photographs.

Created in Salvador da Bahia—an epicenter of African diasporic culture—these works by Thomas Allen Harris, Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos, and Joshua Rashaad McFadden delve into the complexities of Black life across generations and geographies. They highlight portraiture as a site of representation, resistance, and reimagining, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of Black identity. This exhibition interrogates the portrait as both a tool for representation and a site of resistance. Together, these works navigate the weight of oppression while imagining liberated presents and futures within the Afro-Atlantic world.

Through three distinct yet interconnected works, Resquícios e Ressonância | Remnants and Resonance underscores the transformative potential of portraiture to document, resist, and reimagine Black lived experiences. It positions portraiture as a medium that captures fragments of queer histories, ancestral religions, Black joy, and community, weaving these elements into resonant narratives that illuminate the richness of Black existence.

 

É Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001) by Thomas Allen Harris

Thomas Allen Harris’s É Minha Cara/That’s My Face is a mythopoetic odyssey interweaving Black queer intimacy, spirituality, and identity across three generations of an African American family. Through a diasporic lens, Harris embarks on a deeply personal journey to Salvador da Bahia, a spiritual homeland, to connect with ancestral spirits inhabiting his dreams. This pilgrimage, rich with yearning and self-discovery, parallels his search for a mythic motherland.

Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos, co-founder of Zumví - Arquivo Afro-Fotográfico, plays a pivotal role in exploring diasporic connections and queer identity. He and Harris first collaborated in the 1990s, a connection rediscovered during McFadden’s 2021 visit to Salvador. Their reunion brought a shared creative legacy back into focus, underscoring photography’s ability to bridge time, space, and generations.

Harris captures Black queer spaces as sanctuaries of intimacy and affirmation. Moments of shared smiles, warm embraces, and quiet safety construct a visual language of care and belonging. By centering Black queer lives and their expressions of love and vulnerability, these spaces become acts of radical resistance—cultivating joy and kinship in a world often hostile to both Blackness and queerness.

Santos contributes through his intimate portraiture in the film, photographing peers and community members. Making portraits affirms his subjects' existence, beauty, and humanity, transforming the act into a shared experience of trust and vulnerability. Together, Harris and Santos demonstrate the transformative power of seeing and being seen within a Black queer framework.

 

Selections from the Photographic Archive of Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos

Known as "Lente Negra," Lázaro Roberto Ferreira dos Santos is a trailblazing Afro-Brazilian photographer whose work spans over four decades. As co-founder of Zumví - Arquivo Afro-Fotográfico, an association dedicated to Black photographers, Santos has built a vital archive celebrating Afro-Brazilian aesthetics, queerness, manhood, and labor.

His photographs embody a duality of resistance and celebration, offering an intimate yet expansive lens on Black life in Salvador da Bahia. Each image amplifies the dignity and beauty of his subjects, positioning them as central figures within the broader narrative of Black visual culture. Through his documentary and artistic portraiture, Santos creates a visual language that asserts the richness of Black cultural expressions while challenging dominant narratives. The works presented in this exhibition exemplify his commitment to honoring the complexity of Black existence in Brazil.

 

Evidence by Joshua Rashaad McFadden

Joshua Rashaad McFadden’s Evidence Vol. 3 continues his exploration of identity, expanding the exhibition’s focus by centering Afro-transgender and non-binary individuals alongside broader representations of LGBTQ+ communities within the Black diaspora. Originally conceived in the United States, Evidence now extends its scope to Salvador, Bahia, examining the intersections of transphobia, homophobia, and anti-Blackness in a transnational context.

Drawing from bell hooks’ concept of The Oppositional Gaze, McFadden employs photographic portraiture as an act of resistance—challenging the historical erasure and misrepresentation of Black queer and trans individuals. Rather than accepting the dominant gaze that seeks to render them invisible, his subjects reclaim their right to be seen on their own terms. Through their direct engagement with the camera, they assert agency, embodying what hooks describes as the radical power of looking back.

Through portraiture and written histories, McFadden constructs a living archive that confronts systemic erasure while amplifying marginalized voices. His work in Salvador unveils the nuanced realities of Black queer lives, celebrating their humanity, resilience, and joy. Guided by themes of Black Queer Diaspora, Embodied Archives, and Worldmaking, Evidence positions portraiture as a site of reclamation and empowerment.

Each image stands as a testament to survival and resistance—an act of defiance against invisibility. At the same time, McFadden’s portraits extend an invitation to imagine a future where Black trans and LGBTQ+ lives are not only acknowledged but fully centered and celebrated. In doing so, he continues the legacy of The Oppositional Gaze, transforming photography into a space where Black queer individuals are no longer mere subjects but active participants in shaping their own representation.