Page - 214 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

214 | Ailie M. Posillico While the exhibit predominantly centers the spaces of the home, other im- ages captioned “Outside” are featured as well. Some “Outside” photographs center the OPEN signs hung on boarded-up corner stores (“Outside”, Barbara Takenaga, 22 May 2020) while others are of flyers that announce blood drives (“Outside”, Jordan Eagles, 17 June 2020). Many photos that fall into the “Out- side” category feature community protests in response to Black lives lost due to police violence over the summer. One image of her sons by Janna Ireland, contributed on 24 May, is particularly poignant because of the history of blackness in America to which it speaks. As a caption to her photograph of her sons Ireland writes, Posting early because this day is so heavy, and this is a picture about love and closeness. The feeling of watching Minneapolis burn last night was in- describable. My heart was full and empty and broken all at once, and today I am so tired. I have been trying and failing to organize my thoughts about this week, and George Floyd, and the wounds his death has prodded. The thought that keeps circling is that all of the pictures I share of my children are a form of propaganda, and that the idea they are trying to sell is that my people are people, and that we have a right to our lives. This world is absurd, but there is nowhere else to go. It is an awful kind of relief to have my longstanding fears – those of a mother of black children living in the United States – to distract me from my new fears about parenting during a pandemic. I know these old fears intimately, at least. The exhibition highlights the contours and contrasts of identity. Ireland’s pho- tograph speaks to these contours, and the impossibility of ever really getting beyond them, despite the feelings of connection that images can evoke. In other words, our identities, while they enable connection, also segregate us into racialized, stigmatized, and ostracized groups. The things which make us individually ourselves and thus able to connect with others implicate our social privilege or marginalization. The exhibition calls attention to these dis- parities of identities as much as to familiarities that can be drawn between them. Ireland’s photo traces life’s limits and edges. It alludes to the idea that there are certain experiences of race, of class, of sexuality that are more fa- miliar to some than to others. In this way it forces us to attend to all the spaces in our lives that lack connection. It makes us realize that even through art connection is not always possible. Ireland’s photo and the accompanying caption evoke absurdity, fear, feelings of disconnection. Ireland’s photo is one www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 211–215