This story originally appeared in Up + Rising, a celebration of extraordinary Black voices, and is the first chapter of i-D’s 40th anniversary issue (1980-2020).
i-D chronicled over 100 activists and artists, musicians and writers, photographers and creatives, in Atlanta, Baltimore, Minneapolis, LA, London, New York, Paris and Toronto.
“It’s been a few days since Jacob Blake, a few months since Breonna Taylor, a few years since Adama Traore. A few moments in between every Black person that has been killed by the police, the government, this society. Decades since Black bodies are overlapping in tremendous speed on a wounded path. We react, we are mad. We react, we share hashtags. We react, we go march.
We react, we react, we react. We exhaust ourselves mentally, psychologically, and physically till the next one… Yes the next one because it’s a pattern we learned to accept, somewhere stuck in between endless representations of Black people in misery and a blurred history our society refuses to address. Where is the progress? On a silent and unbalanced agreement allowing us to live as long as we don’t exist? An elongated agony started from birth.”
Credits
Photography Joshua Woods.
Styling Dan Sablon.
Hair and make-up Aurore Gibrien at Bryant Artists using L’Oreal hair and Dior make-up.
Set design Kaduri Elyashar.
Photography assistance Kyle Keese.
Styling assistance Latif Samassi.
Make-up assistance Ruben Mas.
Casting director Samuel Ellis Scheinman for DMCASTING.
Casting assistance Alexandra Antonova.