Issue 143: Movement

This issue of Fraction explores the emotional and social experiences of movement, and the idea of freedom of movement. How do we embody the act of movement – what happens to us after we leave here, and before we get there?

Amani Willett examines the fraught relationship that many Black Americans, including his own family, have with driving. In photographs and collages from his book A Parallel Road, Willett brings together different visual modes – portraits and studies, family photographs, and archival images. These visual modes intersect to describe psychological spaces where the road’s promise of pleasure and freedom is offset by anxiety and fear, as Black drivers continue to face the same threats that prompted The Negro Motorist’s Green Book’s initial publication in 1936.

In August of 2020, Yun Peng traveled from Hawaii to Beijing (with three stops on three continents) to see her ailing father, a journey that required a fourteen-day quarantine upon her entry to China in Xiamen.  Peng journaled her isolated stay in the hotel on Instagram, tracing the repeating arcs of days waiting in an unremarkable room, in an in-between place, looking out the window at a city that she had not chosen to, and would not visit, held in place on her way home.

Bryan Formhals has been intentionally and systematically exploring New York City on foot for twelve years.  Trying to walk every footbridge in New York, or walking from LaGuardia Airport to JFK, Formhals reveals the city as continuous: a place connected and articulated by political decisions, social circumstance, and natural imperatives.  By consciously walking he creates a relationship with the city, acknowledging the city’s physical, material presence and its intersection with his own life.

And: when movement stops, the world itself downshifts.  Panadella is a travelers’ service area in Catalonia, once a regular stop in and out of Barcelona, but bypassed by drivers after a new highway was constructed in 2004.  Juan Sánchez Sánchez’s photographs tell the story of a mythical Panadella populated by those who were left behind.

It’s an honor to be able to share these four projects about movement, and I’m grateful to these four photographers, whose work I hope you will explore further.

Charcoal Book Club’s March feature is Shikawatari by Chieko Shiraishi. Read about the book and the book club below.

Leo Hsu

charcoal book club - MARCH 2021