Linda Foard Roberts: Lament

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Through contemporary photographs, personal stories, essays, and quotes, Lament connects the tangibility of history and the geography of memory to a greater understanding of the palpable presence of our shared past in everyday life. 

For this project, Roberts employed Civil War-era equipment—an 8x10-inch view camera with a Darlot brass barrel lens—and visited sites across the American South where devastating events in social history have taken place. This use of historical equipment invokes the temporal merging she seeks to capture in her work—the overlap of the evidence of our past with the present. In an ongoing effort to seek truth, the artist bears witness to the silent stories encoded in our surroundings. Her work examines life, death, human rights, and excavations of narratives invisibly embedded in our lives. Roberts has seen how such endeavors can create opportunities for change, compassion, action, and justice. 

Lament is designed in two volumes housed in a cloth-covered slipcase. The first volume focuses on her images, while the second volume comprises texts by scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D., Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., Michelle Lanier, and Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., and a poem by E. Ethelbert Miller.

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Through contemporary photographs, personal stories, essays, and quotes, Lament connects the tangibility of history and the geography of memory to a greater understanding of the palpable presence of our shared past in everyday life. 

For this project, Roberts employed Civil War-era equipment—an 8x10-inch view camera with a Darlot brass barrel lens—and visited sites across the American South where devastating events in social history have taken place. This use of historical equipment invokes the temporal merging she seeks to capture in her work—the overlap of the evidence of our past with the present. In an ongoing effort to seek truth, the artist bears witness to the silent stories encoded in our surroundings. Her work examines life, death, human rights, and excavations of narratives invisibly embedded in our lives. Roberts has seen how such endeavors can create opportunities for change, compassion, action, and justice. 

Lament is designed in two volumes housed in a cloth-covered slipcase. The first volume focuses on her images, while the second volume comprises texts by scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D., Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., Michelle Lanier, and Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., and a poem by E. Ethelbert Miller.

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  • Artwork by Linda Foard Roberts
    Text by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D.; Cheryl Finley, Ph.D.; Michelle Lanier; and Jennifer Sudul Edwards, Ph.D.;
    Poem by E. Ethelbert Miller

    Two hardcover volumes in cloth-bound slipcase
    10 × 11.5 inches
    Book 1: 146 pages / 73 images
    Book 2: 56 pages / 4 images

    Trade ISBN: 9798890181138
    Signed ISBN: 9798890181145

  • Linda Foard Roberts (b. 1961) makes work that is deeply personal, rooted in memory, family and local histories, and combined with philosophical inquiries about life, death, and basic human rights. Roberts is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her project Lament, a song of sorrow for those not heard. Preferring the imperfections of old lenses and the history inherent within them, her work is metaphorical and layered, intending to cross language and cultural barriers. Posing the environment as a reflection of ourselves, her photographs engage the transformative cycles that shape our lives, bound by time and what it means to be human, a foundation upon which we can all find common ground. 

    The work of Linda Foard Roberts has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, at venues in Australia, Guatemala, Argentina, and Germany. Her artwork is held in the collections of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (Charlotte, NC), Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), Gregg Museum of Art and Design (Raleigh, NC), Harry Ransom Center (Austin, TX), Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC), Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, New Orleans Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art (Palm Beach, FL), North Carolina Museum of Art, and The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA). Roberts is represented by SOCO Gallery in North Carolina and Sol del RIO in Guatemala. The artist lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina.