PAST CONVERSATION
Book Signing: True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis)
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PAST CONVERSATION
Book Signing: True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis)
Join Baxter St and Aperture Foundation on March 31st from 6-8pm for a book signing of Zora J Murff’s monograph, True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis). This event will take place in Baxter St’s Project Space at 128 Baxter St.
True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) is a chronicle of survival by trailblazing artist Zora J Murff. Murff constructs a manual for coming to terms with the historical and contemporary realities of America’s divisive structures of privilege and caste. Since leaving social work to pursue photography over a decade ago, Murff’s work has consistently grappled with the complicit entanglement of the medium in the histories of spectacle, commodification, and race, often contextualizing his own photographs with found and appropriated images and commissioned texts. True Colors continues that work, expanding to address the act of remembering and the politics of self, which Murff identifies as “the duality of Black patriotism and the challenges of finding belonging in places not made for me—of creating an affirmation in a moment of crisis as I learn to remake myself in my own image.” Nuanced, challenging, and inspiring, True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) is a must-have monograph by a rising and standout artist. True Colors is the result of the inaugural Next Step Award, a partnership between Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, in partnership with the 7G Foundation.
Zora J Murff (born in Des Moines, Iowa, 1987) is assistant professor of photography at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. In 2019, Murff was named an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist, a PDN 30 honoree, and a Light Work Artist-in-Residence; he was one of eight artists chosen for the most recent iteration of the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography series, Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020. Murff’s books include Corrections (2015); LOST, Omaha (2018); and At No Point In Between (2019). His work was presented at the 2021 Rencontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award.
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online. Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multiplatform publisher and center forthe photo community. From its base in New York, Aperture Foundation produces, publishes, and presents a variety of photography projects and programs—locally, across the United States, and around the world.
7|G Foundation champions organizations and individuals that challenge inequality in human rights, education, art, and culture. By partnering with organizations, artists, and community facilitators, we seek to build strong community bonds that elevate local culture while supporting cultural change founded upon our core social impact and sustainability values.