Kamal X

Black Astronaut

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Black Astronaut. The Stars Belong to the People Believe in yourself, whatever the mission Join award winning photographer Kamal X on his epic search for beauty through a divided America. Black Astronaut is an extraordinary collection of powerful images that tell the stories of the everyday people behind the sensationalised headlines, a nuanced representation of the new Black America. Living, loving and fighting for a better world in >Open your heart to this electrifying collection of images, as Kamal X uses his camera to explore America after George Floyd, Covid-19 and Trump by finding beauty, humanity and hope in the rage of a people under fire. Black Astronaut serves as a raw opportunity to re-evaluate one's own intersection with the ongoing shifts in society that bring renewed threats to communities against a background framed by the unequal impact of economic volatility. This book is about looking at the recent past to try to find a direction for the near future. Kamal X emerged from the isolation of covid lockdown, seeking a new mission, wanting to document the rage and passion of people in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. But he was afraid to go back out into the world in the middle of the worst pandemic in living memory, and so he took on the mantle of the Black Astronaut, a kind of mental totem to give himself the strength to continue on his impossible mission. Championing the importance of believing in oneself no matter how extraordinary the mission. Features and contents: A photographic essay in six parts. Images from an epic journey through 13 cities and 9 states over the period of 120 weeks: - Introduction: Finding X - Part 1: Mothership, Stay Home. - Part 2: the Big Bang, Higher Power - Part 3: Gravity, When We Close Our Eyes - Part 4: Deep Space, The Great Beyond - Part 5: Antimatter, Internet Explorer - Part 6: Zenith, The Speed of Light "The road never lies, it only provides opportunity to see who you are and what you are truly made of." --Kamal X

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Carpet Bombing Culture
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. Oktober 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 282mm x 251mm x 28mm
• Gewicht: 1746g
• ISBN-13: 9781908211934
• ISBN-10: 1908211938
• Artikelnr.: 67866874

Autorenporträt

'The road never lies, it only provides opportunity to see who you are and what you are truly made of' Kamal X From early childhood while growing up in Newark, NJ, Kamal X had a keen interest in connecting with different perspectives and voices. He found that cinema and still images were pathways to uncovering the stories beyond the world of his own. Despite Kamal's early interest in visual media, it was after the untimely loss of his best friend to colon cancer that he redirected his focus from business to travel and self-discovery. Suddenly, understanding the importance of every single moment became Kamal's purpose. With this intention and the memory of his friend in mind, Kamal dropped everything to embark alone on a 5-year quest to travel around the world to find peace and meaning. His purhase of a Nikon D3300 one year into his travels created and cemented a passion for photography as a way to honor the full scope of a moment in a manner that is rooted in honesty, whether beautiful or painful. Through Kamal's current style takes inspiration from legendary photographers of the 20th century such as Bruce Davidson and Richard Avedeon, his overall guiding principles in his art and life are most influenced by the timeless wisdom of Muhammad Ali and his notion that only through patience and compassion, comes extreme honesty. Likewise, while living in Oakland, CA during the COVID-19 lockdown, Kamal conected with the work of Jean Michel Basquiat, zeroing in one one particular quote of his: "Black people are never portrayed realistically - not even portrayed in modern art at all." This struck Kamal as validation of what he describes as a "lack of narrative nuance" for black people portrayed in art. His objective became to challenge oversimplified depictions of African Americans, and tell their individual stories - leaving the spectator with a clear understanding of not only what it means to be black, but what what it means to be human.