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Greynold Park
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Johanne Rahaman Collection
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Exhibition:
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Photographs
Date:
45074
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Artist
Rahaman, Johanne
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Rahaman, Johanne
Johanne Rahaman is a documentary photographer working with both digital and film formats since 2002. Her current project, BlackFlorida, is an ongoing photographic archive documenting the evolving urban and rural spaces occupied by Black communities throughout Florida. Through environmental portraits, landscape, and architectural imagery, Rahaman captures neighborhoods in flux, underscoring the urgency of preserving the stories of these spaces before they are altered or lost. Her work is deeply personal, as she draws inspiration from her own roots in the stigmatized Laventille Hills of Trinidad, aiming to offer a more nuanced and positive view of working-class Black communities as places of home, resilience, and life.
Driven by a desire to challenge the lack of complex, affirmative representations of Black communities in mainstream media, Rahaman’s BlackFlorida project focuses on everyday moments that highlight entrepreneurship, beauty, sensuality, aging, youth, and mortality. She seeks to amplify the voices of marginalized Black working-class individuals, showcasing their strength and vibrancy. Upon completion, the photographs will be repatriated to the communities they depict through a trust, ensuring that the images contribute to a broader, more inclusive narrative of Black life across the state.
Rahaman's work has been featured in prominent publications such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Huffington Post, Bloomberg Business Week, and BBC. Her photography has also been highlighted in The New Yorker, Hyperallergic, Jezebel, Miami New Times, Orlando Weekly, and across NPR affiliates including WLRN Miami and WMFE Orlando. Additionally, her work was published in the Oxford American Summer issue and Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.
A recipient of several prestigious awards, Rahaman has been honored with the Ellies Creator Award (2018), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Knight Arts Challenge grant (2017), an Alternate ROOTS grant, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP) grant.
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