yes, i'm changing

(via standpoor)

lesbianartandartists:

Zoe Leonard, The Fae Richards Photo Archive, 1993–96

The Fae Richards Photo Archive is the collaborative outcome of artist Zoe Leonard and film maker Cheryl Dunye. The photographic narrative charts the life of the fictional character Fae Richards, better known as ‘The Watermelon Woman’, an African-American actress born in the early 20th century through to her old age and involvement in the civil rights movement.

Leonard staged photographs of Richards throughout her childhood and adult life. These then act as props that form the basis of Cheryl Dunye’s film ‘The Watermelon Woman’, in which Dunye takes the leading role as a young African-American lesbian video store employee who is researching the life of the 1930s starlet Fae Richards. Dunye attributes her photographic falsification of a life history to the lack of information recorded in real life:

“The Watermelon Woman came from the real lack of any information about the lesbian and film history of African-American women. Since it wasn’t happening, I invented it.”

Through the use of photographic and archival conventions Leonard and Dunye successfully borrow from the lives of historical figures to create a believable narrative that opens up questions as to what is left out of the historical record.

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(via mulletlover)