It just couldn’t wait any longer.
Local musician Rehema McNeil organized a poignant photo project a couple months ago showing the precariousness that she and other African-Americans encounter daily. She originally planned to debut the series at a panel discussion event, but she decided the time had come.
“I could no longer wait and hold on to these images, because this is what we go through and deal with every single day,” McNeil said.
The photo series, called Point Blank, shows bright red targets painted on the bare Black backs of some of McNeil’s closest friends, a visual aid to help communicate the feeling that the world is taking aim at people of color.
“I was thinking about all of the murders going on, and how there have been so many innocent people slain due to gun violence and police brutality, and I felt like we walk around every single day with targets on our backs,” she said. “Any one of us could be next.”
Though the full photo series hasn’t been released, McNeil posted some of the images to social media to get the conversation started. The released photos, shot by Terrance Lisenbee Jr., show local artists and musicians in a variety of poses — hands raised in a “don’t shoot” stance; kneeling with fingers laced behind their heads, in preparation to be handcuffed; standing with hands pressed against a wall, as if ready to be searched by police; lying on the ground, apparently dead. One photo shows Lisenbee’s two young sons with targets painted on their backs and fists in the air.
Most of the photos don’t show faces.
“Our backs are to the camera for most of the shots, because we don’t want to put a face to it,” McNeil said. “We want to (portray) the identity of melanin, just Black people in general, of all shades.”
McNeil said she hopes the photos can help white people better understand what the Black community goes through. She said an experience after Philando Castile was shot and killed by police in Minnesota reaffirmed that her project (which was already complete) was necessary.
“The next day, there was a gloomy feeling in the air,” McNeil explained, but she noticed many caucasian people she encountered at the grocery store and at work didn’t seem to feel it.
“The sound of their laughter crept in my spine; it irritated my spirit. And I was like, they live in a completely different world. They’re completely oblivious to what we endure every single day,” she said. “Sometimes you can try to tell somebody what we’re going through, but to show them is a whole other story.
“Even though after the shoot, we were able to take a shower and wash the target off, these targets are what we have to bear until the day we die.”
