Vanessa Charlot

Fire Next Time

Fire Next Time, inspired by the iconic literary work of James Baldwin, bears witness to the lives of Black residents in St. Louis, Missouri who live in a perpetual state of raging against the seemingly inextinguishable flames of racism, brutality, and oppression in modern day America. With Black communities facing two existential threats to their survival during the Summer of 2020, Covid-19 and ongoing police brutality, unavoidable truths laid itself bare to be critiqued and grappled with as a larger society. This archival project is an in-depth, visual narrative of life in St. Louis through the lens of racialized bodies paralleling the life cycle of fire. Fire is ignited. It grows. It combusts. And ultimately it decays. Black Americans and their lived realities symbolize the blazing fire of an endless fight for self-affirmation in a hostile environment—their homeland.

The photographs are a window into the lives of Black people and the fire in their environment. In America, one finds themselves engulfed by ever burning flames and the smoldering heat of racism. Despite this, one must learn to live in the face of the lurking shadows of an oppressive gaze. The collective experiences symbolize the fire’s source, its fuel as well as its evidence. How is it far fetched to imagine America as an endless inferno, raining death and despair on Black bodies? How far away from the cotton fields is it safe enough to be Black in America?

This fire rages before it ever smolders and decays. It is the kind of fire from which any random ember may reignite uncontrollably destructive flames. Like the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, the stench of her destruction lingers longer than the smell of the trail of smoke her flames have left behind. In considering this, what then, becomes of the Black people, who despite being a walking target, must live, survive, thrive and die in this country, for this country, and because of this country? In this way, the raging fire then becomes symbolic of a haunting question, where then, will the Black people find solace and rest, if not in their grave?

If we accept that racism is by design, that America deliberately set out to destroy Black communities, what then do we make of the violence against that same body when it dies in American wars, dominates in her sports, or is lynched in her streets? When will the threat that the Black body poses cease to exist in this land? To be Black in America is to be born of a womb that despises you for the pariah that it sees you as. The shadow from the flames means Black bodies expect harassment, brutality, and oppression. Black bodies can’t breathe through America’s Black Fires. Maybe they do it in the grave.

Personal Note: As a black woman photographer, documenting Black life in St. Louis in the midst of a global pandemic and a civil rights movement it became a love letter that I was creating for Black America, for myself, my own son. A letter that forced me to repeatedly question my own conceptions of Blackness within the American context. How much of reality is created and endangered by the stories, histories, privileges and legacies we believe and spread? Imagine if we could all see Black bodies as free and deserving?

These photographs bear witness to our power, our spirit, and our roots—roots that defy and transcend fiery flames to survive, experience joy, and even dare to flourish.

Black Woman's Shadow

In America, she lives in a perpetual state of trauma. To survive, she moves performatively through life, without processing her anguish. She symbolizes what has become the American norm—grieving, coping and healing in the shadows while carrying the burden that is one’s Blackness. For many, racism means feeling like an outsider in your own country. The cycle of trauma, anguish, pain, isolation and loneliness is harrowing and relentless. At the same time, nothing about this struggle is new for her. This lone shadowy figure has always been kin to Black women. The project poses the question: how do Black women cope with the alienation and anguish of their experience?

This photo series gives a raw and intimate view into the psyche of a Black woman as she grapples with this trauma--her anguish, fear, loneliness, and angst bare. To navigate her inner world and cope with the relentless barrage of racial and gender-based trauma in America, she confines herself to her most intimate and private spaces. What else could she do knowing that American values like equality and justice do not always include people who look like her. She symbolizes the potential and the broken promises made to Black America. The result is grief, sadness and exasperation--emotions that shape this photo series. While symbolic of the hope for Black America, she still carries a great burden--to love a country that does not love her back.

Down in the Delta

Greenwood, located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, is known as the Cotton Capital of the World. Cotton fields, Confederate flags, and remnants of Jim Crow are still embedded within the fabric of its society and in it's hauntingly beautiful landscape. Equally present is the unique past histories and contemporary evidence of Black rural life.

The project, Down in the Delta, is a visual archive of the lived experiences and legacy of Roosevelt Davenport (b. 1937), a former sharecropper, and his family, who all worked and now own a piece of the land on the Quito Plantation in Morgan City where their ancestors were kept as enslaved people. This project sheds light on Black American roots - those who chose to stay in the Delta and create family, home and community.

Pieces of Him

Between observing and capturing fleeting moments of my son bathing in our backyard, my mind then wandered to something I’ve read once.

That every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly. And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this day-to-day world of injustice and pain and heartache. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.

Pieces of Him, is a radical love letter, that visually rejects that idea that our lives should be reduced to an endless fight to affirm our humanity. Instead it is full of quiet moments that sometimes never make headlines but forever etched in our hearts.

The Song of a Nation

The assassination and funeral Haiti’s late President Jovenel Moise and his untimely death is not the only story in the ongoing civil and political unrest in this ongoing saga. There are so many plausible subplots as to why he was killed and who might have made the call to end his life, including the ongoing impact of centuries of nefarious foreign actors who intend to keep the state crippled and make the road to a more integrated and inclusive economy more perilous than it already is.

But even that does not speak to the core of this very complex and multi-faceted story. At its core, this story is about the people of Haiti who are being forced once again to live with a bombardment of atrocities leaving many in this perpetual state of fight or flight. It begs many questions needing answers: what does rest, peace and healing look like in Haiti and for Haitians? And, why is it so hard to humanize the lives of people who have been continuously traumatized—as if those of us in ‘developed countries’ have never experienced trauma or seen just how destructive and downright evil the path to satisfy one’s lust and greed for money and power can be? How can we begin to see more of ourselves in what we deem “the other” instead of looking at Haiti and its people as one whose fate of damnation is written in stone. If we can always look forward to better days, why do we rob others of that same power—of hope and a necessity to come together to make the future as good as we know it can be.

The ordinary response to atrocities is to try to banish them from our minds. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. And so, the remnants of the burning tires in Haiti‘s streets serves as reminders that it is not about the ashes, for they tell a tale of what was. It’s about having a vision sufficient to understand that the tale that lies among the ashes stands ready to build the dream that will rise above the ashes.

Gatekeepers

Haiti is known to be 90 percent Catholic and 100 percent Vodou. It is a place where magic and the mundane dance intertwined under the Caribbean sun. It is also where generations of gatekeepers to the spiritual realms are forged out nothingness to become the eternal. For these, the gatekeepers and guardians of the traditions and secrets passed down from the first African that set foot on the island of Hispaniola and before the first family member that made it to the shores of Miami looking for a new life, the spirits are ever-present.

This project explores the merging of two different religions, Catholicism and Vodou, within the Haitian community and how it shapes their cultural identity. Through ritual, dances, saints and songs, these gatekeepers help other Haitians remain connected to the spirits. These photographs depict how gatekeepers from the very young to the old, men and women, serve as portals to that space between the realms, where all matter ceases and energy begins.

Joel & Robert

Joel and Robert explores the power of race, identity, desire, masculinity and connection. Through a queer framework, the photographs examine ideas around sexuality, love, gender and the norms within Black communities and asks larger questions about identity, intimacy and love.