Jefferson Davis Monument #2, Richmond, Virginia 2020

Kris Graves made this photograph in Richmond, Virginia, sometime this century. It’s a picture of the Jefferson Davis monument, but it’s also a picture *after* the monument, which is a tricky thing to photograph. I’m drawn to the way Graves captures the monument's surface texture. The stone is old, it has this aged quality, a kind of built-in history. And then there's the graffiti, a layer of contemporary mark-making right on top of it. It’s like, history is never really done, is it? Someone has spray-painted a peace sign that looks like a primal scream! The light in this photograph does a lot of work, too. It's that liminal time of day, when the sky is that deep, saturated blue. It's not quite day, not quite night. It's a moment of transition, a moment of change. It reminds me of the work of Dawoud Bey who also uses photography to explore history, identity, and community. This image feels like it's about all those things, too. It's not just a picture of a monument. It's a picture of a conversation, a struggle, a transformation.