text & images
The Fun Devil and King James
When my parents first met, my mother was a sheltered native Rhode Islander, a folk-singing hippie; my father was a worldly Vietnam War veteran from Alabama who loved history, theater, and film. Together in Boston, as college students in the early 1970s, they became soul babies in search of a Black new world of immense possibilities and where leisure was a form of resistance to oppressive spatial politics. Unfettered by any allegiances other than to the strong belief that as young Black people, they could do and be whatever they wanted, and certainly something other than what the dominant culture worked hard to convince them they could and would be, they leveraged Boston's cultural assets toward creating something new to be. In their free time, my parents wandered the city in search of good times, great knowledge, and community. They were the ultimate flaneur and flaneuse.
The Fun Devil and King James tells this story through photo-performances, found photographs, folklore, archival material, and sound. The following photographs are taken from the project.
crystal am nelson is a scholar, curator, and artist who focuses on race, gender, sexuality, and representation. She holds a PhD in visual studies from UC Santa Cruz and an MFA in photography from San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has held numerous residencies, including with the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and Fieldwork Marfa. She has curated exhibitions and events from San Francisco to Miami. Her writing has appeared in Feminist Media Histories, Contact Sheet, The Brooklyn Rail, among other places.