Naomi Simone
Bury Me
January 2024 - Ongoing
The United States of America8x10 Tintype
Van Dyke Brown 4x5
Charcoal Rubbing 11x14
Charcoal Rubbing 11x14
Charcoal Rubbing 11x14
Bury Me
Impact/Imprint
Landscapes
Main
Bury Me takes its name from a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and reflects on what has been covered, erased, and forgotten. For over a year I have walked through African American cemeteries and burial grounds searching for a sense of continuity or peace between them, but that cannot be fully restored.. Many of these burial grounds have been bulldozed, abandoned, or buried again beneath development.
Their disappearance carries an unspoken grief and a violation that has been painted over the dead themselves. I’ve attempted to interact with and capture these landscapes time and time again in so many different ways. I’ve visited each site three times at least, arms and back loaded with heavy equipment and the bottoms of my jeans soaked in mud and dew. Through the seasons I recognize the same paths, the same uneven ground… And my reward is an image that more often than not is unfinished. I spend weeks to months staring at the same image, the same moment through the light of the enlarger, and then again as a paper print. I’ve seen some of these moments on paper, tin, and glass, as cyanotypes and van dyke browns, and more. For the entirety of this project I have lived and breathed these landscapes. I see now that the unfolding of the project itself is the elegy. The practice is mourning and reckoning. And with much relief, I have discovered a quiet lyricism in the repetition and return.