As part of their Film Series, Atlanta Photography Festival is partnering this year with BronzeLens Film Festival and will screen Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People by documentary filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris.
Harris will be present in Atlanta for the screening of his film, which explores how the medium of photography has shaped the identity of African-American communities. He will also be presenting The Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, a program that he created as a companion to Through the Lens Darkly.
Harris is known for making deeply personal films, using archived pictures of his family for the last 25 years. In 2009, he launched The Diaspora Family Reunion in an effort to encourage people to preserve their own history.
The road show, which has known great success, started in Atlanta and will be back home on October 25 at the Westside Arts Center.
Using interactive multimedia and old-fashioned storytelling, Harris engages audiences to share their private, family photographs with a public of strangers. He also encourages them to go back home and think about archiving their pictures and digitalizing them, making short movies, and “creating fun with them so they don’t stay any longer under the bed or in the attic,” Harris explained.
In the process, people feel connected to each other by realizing the common thread that ties them together. “People are the ones who make history and change history. It is very powerful when they understand how a personal family story and photos are connected with larger historic movement,” Harris said.
EXHIBITION
Through the Lens Darkly Screening
October 22, 7-8:30pm
SCAD show
173 14th Street NE
Atlanta GA 30309
USA
Digital Diaspora Reunion Workshop
October 25, 2-4pm
Westside Cultural Arts Center
760 10th street NW
Atlanta GA 30318
USA
