Build Your Archive presents: 

One Photo at A Time 

A workshop in collaboration with The World(s) She Made: Composing the Radical Lives of Kathleen Neal Cleaver 

Description: How can an intentional choice to make memories lead to preserving them in both print and digital forms? Personal archiving can seem like an overwhelming feat for some and a general pastime for others. Kathleen Neal Cleaver took up the responsibility for her family when she was traveling the world protecting her children, making memories and preserving her legacy in real time. Just like Ms. Cleaver, it is a responsibility of the community at large to remind each other that it is a practice that takes time and commitment. If you focus on One Photo At a Time, one day you’ll look up and have archived more than you would have imagined. 

This workshop is led by Atlanta-based artist-archivist Sierra King. Participants should bring a smartphone or a physical photograph. They will learn to critically analyze the use of photography to document the lives and experiences of Black people, and will leave with a photograph of themselves or a favorite memory properly protected by archival standards. This project is supported by Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through appropriations made by the Georgia General Assembly.

This event is free and open to the public, but has limited capacity and requires registration.

REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/one-photo-at-a-time-tickets-514551917637

Bio: Sierra King is a multidisciplinary artist, archivist, and curator living and working in Atlanta, GA. Her practice of art and archiving acts as a call and response to one another by utilizing her family collections of documents, ephemera, and history to enter in conversations across the collective Black Memory.  In all of her art making, archiving, and curatorial endeavors, the community is her collaborator. 

Website: www.buildyourarchive.com

Portfolio: www.sierraking.co

The Story Architect Presents: 

There’s No Better Time Than Now - The Role of Photography in the World of Activism

A workshop in collaboration with The World(s) She Made: Composing the Radical Lives of Kathleen Neal Cleaver 

DESCRIPTION: We are all at some point in our life presented with moments where we are called to act, indiscriminate of our race, creed, social status, and/or economic positioning. Recognizing the moment and understanding the part we are called to play in it can be challenging and sometimes elusive. Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a sought-after subject of many renowned photographers of her time not only because of her work with the Black Panther Party, but also because she actively participated in collaboration with them. Their efforts combined created imagery that would ensure their stories would not be omitted from the historic records. Gordon Parks was quoted saying “I picked up the camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty. Being able to differentiate when the moment is upon us and answering the call to action by using mediums such as photography to evoke change is a tool we all have access to in the 21st Century. 

This workshop, led by Atlanta-based photographer John Stephens, will analyze how the work of photographers past and present have used photography as their tool for activism and their relationship to the subjects they photograph, empower participants to recognize the decisive moments for activism in life and ways to effectively use photography as a medium to show their stories and let their voices be heard for an effective change in their world, and give participants a clear formula to capture the decisive moment via the medium of photography and effectively exercise their voices to affect change.

This project is supported by Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through appropriations made by the Georgia General Assembly.

REGISTER FOR THE LIVE STREAM: https://tinyurl.com/yc79982e

BIO: John Stephens is a visual artist who uses photography and writing to tell compelling stories that connect and relate to the human journey. Stephens is originally from Atlanta, GA, and is a self-taught photographer. He pulls his inspiration from spirituality, music, history, literature, and present-day culture. He has been working in his craft for over 20 years and has added a focus on story architecture and strategy implementation. His work has been displayed in the AfroFuturism Rising exhibition at the Tubman African American Museum and he has presented as a roundtable panelist for “Visualizing Revolution and Emerging Archives: Building the Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver Family Archive” American Studies Association Conference (Atlanta). Creatively he is driven by the ethos that, "we are all interconnected in ways that can extend our reach as artists, but more importantly as human beings." John assisted with efforts to digitize the Kathleen Cleaver Papers as well as document the archiving story before they were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Library at Emory University. 

Website: www.jasphotoonline.com 

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jas_photo

From Emory University:

The papers, which will reside at Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, span Cleaver's career and life as an activist, particularly as a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and include personal and professional correspondence, books and photographs, as well as audiovisual and born-digital material. 

Cleaver’s papers are timely, says her daughter, Joju Cleaver, since they help provide important historical context for today’s social justice movements, something she feels is missing in the current climate.

“A lot of people are acting like we don’t have a history to draw from, and we do – a very rich one,” says Cleaver, who is an instructional designer for online classes at Georgia State University. “With everything that is going on now, there is a wealth of history, knowledge, and experience that people can learn from and perhaps improve their understanding of scope. There is definitely a lack of direction, and often that comes from a lack of knowledge of your history.”

Joju Cleaver says the archive also shows there is a precedent for social movements being co-opted and infiltrated. The Black Panther Party’s message was often misinterpreted and distorted by the government and the media, and some of their offices in various cities were run for a time by federal agents who infiltrated their ranks, she says.

“There is a lot of danger that people could learn a lot about from prior movements,” Cleaver says.

Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and chair of Emory’s African American Studies department, described the news about the Cleaver papers as “incredible.” She is looking forward to getting her classes back in the Rose Library archives once the pandemic restrictions are lifted.

“We will learn so much from Kathleen Cleaver’s papers,” Anderson says. “Her archive will help us understand the role of women in a movement and movement-building and in international freedom struggles.

“I’m thinking of the different ways scholars can use these papers to enrich our understanding of these enormous issues of freedom, of justice, of globalization, of the role of women, of how gendered roles play out and don’t play out,” Anderson says. “I wonder if we’ll get a sense of what it’s like to raise babies in the middle of a movement. This is exciting in so many ways.”

The parallels to today’s demands for social justice and police reform are undeniable, Anderson says.

“The movements we see today for access to quality healthcare, enough food to eat, an end to police violence and structural inequality – these are all things the Black Panthers fought for,” she says.