Hailing from Rochester, a city rooted in photographic history, artist Joshua Rashaad McFadden was introduced to the medium by his mother when he was given a camera at the age of seven. While pursing his BFA from Elizabeth City State University, an HBCU in North Carolina, McFadden began to recognize the power of photography to evoke visceral, sometimes empathetic, responses from viewers.
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Inspired by artists including Roy DeCarava, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lyle Ashton Harris, McFadden now uses the medium to explore identity, masculinity, father figures, history, and race in a wide array of series including Evidence, selections from which will be on view in the 2020 Aperture Summer Open from September 16-October 18, 2020 at Fotografiska New York.
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“For a long time, I have sharpened my lens on black men, capturing how we perceive ourselves, especially in contrast to how America at large sees us… Like many Millennials, I was rocked to the core by Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012, mainly because I could identify with him,” McFadden told The Undefeated.
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“I also began to grasp the comparisons to Emmett Till’s murder in 1955. I began to really see that the media presented young Black males, even kids like Trayvon as aggressive, and that prompted questions, pushing me to use my work as an instrument to dive deep into what Black masculinity is and is not.”
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