The video begins with inspiring music and shots of a student walking outside. You see many pictures of the civil rights movement, of demonstration. The student Parker Thompson says “When we think about the visual history of Blackness in America, when we think and look at photographs of Black life, especially in the 20th century, the prevailing images are those of the civil rights era of Jim Crow and images that primarily showcase struggle and strife and political upheaval”. We then see student Parker Thompson talking in front of the camera, he continues: “That momentous emotional journey that so many Black people have gone through in this country.”
More pictures of demonstrations show up and Parker continues talking: “I think those images are really important to history, but with “Always Been” and with the project. I want people to recognize the ways in which history has given us one particular view of Black life in America.” We see shots of Parker at his exhibition and see close up shots of the frames on the wall and then cut to pictures of the Always Been project. Parker continues: “These images really show us how Black people are imagining themselves. Throughout segregation, throughout Jim Crow America, and how they’re still experiencing all of the dignities and the humanities and joy of life that exist in everyday Blackness that are really being cast away in the predominant visual history.”
We cut to shots of Parker looking in the distance then a shot of the Griffin Museum of Photography sign. Parker says: “My name is Parker Thompson. I’m a senior history major at Brandeis. I’ve been studying history almost all my time here, and I’m really fortunate that through my connections at the university, I have an exhibition here today at the Griffin Museum in Winchester, Massachusetts.” We then cut to a shot of Parker standing at his exhibition and a title screen comes up that reads “Always Been: Celebrating Black Life in Photographs”. Music ends.
We see Parker in numerous shots walking on Brandeis heading towards the student post office. Happy, relaxing music kicks in. Parker says: “I started collecting photographs, just generally speaking, all throughout High School. I really was a photographer more than anything. My mother and I would go on these photo road trips. And along the way, I would pick up these snapshots at junk shops and antique stores that are really prevalent around where we live in South Carolina.” We see shots of Parker picking up a package and then leaving the post office. We cut to his interview and he continues: “And I’m mixed. I’m biracial, I’m Black, my dad’s Black and my mom’s white. And so that has kind of been this continued push and pull in my life, trying to understand and navigate that dynamic, especially as someone who I would consider as white passing.”
We see stylistic shots of him standing on campus and then cut again to his interview. “One day I was looking through my photographic collection and I realized that there were almost entirely of white people. I realized that I had never even come across photographs of people of color.” We then see shots of Parker on his laptop looking for photographs on eBay, he continues: “And so I started to just kind of explicitly seek it out. I was spending kind of six, seven, eight hours a day on eBay where there’s a marketplace and over a million snapshots kind of like these. And I began to explicitly seek out African-American photographs of everyday life.” We then see a shot of him during his interview and cut to numerous pictures of the Always Been collection. Parker says: “And I realized I’d never seen images like these before. Not only were they absent in my own family albums and in my own life, but I hadn't seen them in popular culture. I hadn't seen them represented in museum environments. And so I really took it upon myself to start assembling this work, start giving it a home, and start to try to understand the power of this visual medium.” Music ends.
We see shots of Parker walking inside of Brandeis’ library, and cut to several quick shots of him going inside a room and opening packages where he pulls out pictures from. We hear reflective, beautiful music in the background. Parker continues talking “I want people when they see these images, to really recognize the ways in which history has given us one particular view of Black life in America and of American Blackness, that it is not just political strife, that it is a very vibrant and dynamic life, that it’s existed here since the very beginning.” We see shots of Parker at his exhibition and shots of the Always been collection.
Parker continues talking: “It’s the ways we’ve always been, and that’s where the title comes from. And so I’m just hoping that people begin to rethink their conceptions of American Blackness, especially in the photographic record. We’re celebrating the subjects of the photographs.” We see Parker in his interview and then we see more pictures of the collection and shots of Parker holding physical pictures and walking on Brandeis’ campus. He continues “But we don’t know the subjects, really. We know a fraction of a fraction of a second of them captured on these pieces of paper. But we are celebrating their wherewithal to pick up a camera and document their existence and to make it known and to put it into the record. These photographs are a lot more deeper than that, and they inform and tell us everything that we need to know about how we think about ourselves, how we see the people in our lives. And really, these photographs are a celebration of the act of photographing, of the act of documenting your life without necessarily a purpose in mind and letting those photographs exist and hope that one day they’ll be picked up again and somebody will be able to take something from them.”
We see some more pictures of the Always Been collection and fade into the Brandeis University logo. Music picks up. We transition into the credits and then the music and video fade to black.
Credits
Special thanks to
Griffin Museum of Photography
Producer/Editor
Jonathan Duran
Videographers
Matheus de Araujo Fortunato
Jonathan Duran
Executive Producer
Dan Kim