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DONATE: In Memory: Support The Nona Faustine Family Fund

Nona Faustine, 72 Canal, Sojourner Truth's Home, 2016. Nona Faustine
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The photographer Nona Faustine passed away on March 20th. She leaves behind her beautiful teen daughter and her sister, who was also her creative director. I got to meet Nona in 2015, when I reached out to her asking if she would consider being in an art exhibition I was curating. This would be my first show, and Nona was the first artist I spoke with. We met at her apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a multigenerational home where Nona was raised and where she was raising her daughter. We spoke about histories hiding in plain sight throughout New York and the book Slavery by Another Name by Douglass Blackmon.

I had dressed cute for the occasion and recall being nervous, my vintage sweater making me sweat, and loving the way Nona had with telling a story. She knew when and how to lean in and pull back, to pause and let tough truths settle. And she was kind about teaching white people who are totally ignorant of the role all white people play upholding white supremacy. Through the gifts of storytelling, both orally and through photography, she was an educator for the ages. When she agreed to be in Exploring Human Injustices through Art, I knew my first exhibition was going to be a major life event for me.

While the exhibition was on view in 2016, Nona and I spoke to some pre-service Social Studies teachers at Teachers College at Columbia University. I recall the students being mesmerized by what is possible when teaching through art. The amount of history Nona
In Praise of Famous Men No More

layered into her photographs was inspiring. The photograph above 72 Canal, Sojourner Truth’s Home, a part of her White Shoes series, was taken at the site as it appeared in 2016, when the photograph was taken. Canal Street, named for the man-made canals installed by the Dutch when the land was known as New Amsterdam, was a major thoroughfare when Truth would have lived there. The plaque in the photograph references a famous line from one of Truth’s speeches, given in 1851. I see the gaze of the character Nona is playing, and it is strong and proud. The woman we have been following through New York’s history of slavery has liberated herself. She celebrates leisure and knowledge and the land. Watching the evolution of the White Shoes has been a gift that will continue to grow.

Nona’s work has never been more relevant in her lifetime than now. Use her photographs in your classrooms, art rooms, and board rooms. She showed us the path forward through this series. She showed us how to find liberation. We must be willing to tell the truth and also listen to it. We must be open to that which makes us uncomfortable because it is through discomfort that we learn. Think about any hard project you had to do in school. It was most likely hard because it involved presence and concentration. Nona’s work requires a presence and willingness to shed old ways of knowing. She showed us how to do it: Shed old thoughts and ideas. Learn to be in your body and understand it as a tool for growth and connection. When we shed the shame we have been trained to experience when witnessing the nude form and desexualize it – while also taking in its female-ness – we move towards liberation. Ways of knowing and interpreting the world expand to include the body.
Thank you, Nona, for constantly pushing boundaries, and showing those who come after you how to be brave and to tell truths through art.
Please donate to her Go Fund Me.
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