Dodge

This work is representative of my recent practice focusing on the intersectionality of Blackness and examinations of the past. I am fascinated by how those intersections persist and shape how we accept our identities. I am continually recontextualizing the Black image, embodying feeling through physicality, and reflecting on the present realities shaped by generational truths. My practice is tactile and process-oriented; I treat images as living objects in a state of continuous transformation, rather than static outcomes. I ask how my personal experience fits into a complex and layered history, and how that understanding shapes the way I show up in the diaspora. My work aims to challenge ingrained systems and beliefs within myself, our community, and in the broader world, inviting reflection and dialogue.

For the majority of my life, I have struggled with accepting the attribute “dark-skinned.” The sneaky connotation that lingers in those syllables has always felt like an attack. Like it spit my Blackness back at me and othered me within a race that is already othered. I sat with myself and asked, “What’s triggering me here?” Is it the implicit racism in the words that often follow that descriptor, or am I distancing myself from my darker hue because I internalize the colorism I despise so much? Maybe it is a mixture of the two.

“Dodge” is a collection of images that plays with the double entendre of dodging darkness and seeking light, the quiet adoration for light skin satiated by the power of my photographic tools. Deciphering which areas of the photograph to lighten eerily mirrors the historical and cultural exaltation of lighter skin. This project acknowledges my failure to block out the inevitable colorist ideals that have been steadily imprinted and passed down generation after generation, while simultaneously accepting and reclaiming the skin God blessed me with because He makes no mistakes.

Danielle Hardy is part of Issue 18 by Guest Editor Hank Willis Thomas.