Nona Faustine

Nona Faustine (1977 – March 20, 2025) was an American photographer and visual artist. Her work focused on history, identity, representation, and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. Her artwork is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum and the Carnegie Museum.

Early life and education Nona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Crown Heights. Her parents came to the city from North Carolina. Faustine was introduced to photography as a child. Her father and uncle were amateur photographers, and Faustine's first camera was a gift from her uncle.

Faustine was initially inspired to become a photographer by a series of Time Life books. She was influenced by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and photojournalist Ernst Haas.

Career As an undergraduate, Faustine worked primarily in documentary photography. She shot one series, "Young Mothers", of young women she knew through her family, friends, and her neighborhood. Faustine's work focused primarily on the experiences of Black women, often through the medium of self-portraitry. For example, her 2016 portrait Say Her Name, photographed in her family's apartment in Flatbush, was created as a tribute to Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in police custody in 2015. observed that the series is "a celebration of the power of African American women to nurture family, even in the direst circumstances. The series’ title refers to the mitochondrial DNA ... Through this scientific metaphor, the series commemorates the continuity of African American womanhood from one generation to another ... The series also underscores the role played by women of color in the struggle for equality and justice. Historically, African American women were marginalized within mainstream feminism. Nevertheless, they were able to turn to and embolden each other in the face of prejudice, even before the advent of the modern feminist movement".

My Country (2016) My Country was Faustine's first solo exhibition, held at Baxter St. Camera Club of New York from December 8, 2016, to January 14, 2017. The exhibition presented works from the White Shoes series, as well as a series of photographs of monuments. The monuments, including the Statue of Liberty and The Lincoln Memorial, are pictured with a black line slicing through the image. The Village Voice wrote that her work was "a frank rendering of America's disgraceful and all-too-buried legacy of marginalization" and explained the impact of the monument photographs: "the graphic interruption stands for the scores of mistreated Americans for whom such structures and their supposed representation of the common good have remained inaccessible".

White Shoes (2012–2021)

The White Shoes series portrays the history of slavery in New York through a series of nude self-portraits taken in former locations significant to the slave trade. The series also engages with representation of the black female body. She began to work on "White Shoes" as a graduate student. Influenced by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, Faustine began the series as her thesis project in 2012 and continued to add to it over the subsequent three years.

Her 2016 exhibition at Smack Mellon was reviewed extensively. The New Yorkers Alexandra Schwartz wrote, "Faustine's photos serve to mark the places that belong to a history too often hidden from view, whether by design, or neglect, or the ever-frenetic pace of change inherent to life in New York." In 2024, the series was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum. According to the DNA-testing company African Ancestry, Faustine found she had Bubi, Hausa, Fulani, and Tikar heritage from her mother's side, and Mandinka and Nigerian Yoruba heritage on her father's side.

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions My Country, Baxter St. Camera Club (2016–2017) Mitochondria, Higher Pictures, Brooklyn, New York, 2021 White Shoes, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2024

Group exhibitions The Outwin American Portraiture Today, 2019, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC Perilous Bodies, Ford Foundation, NY, 2019 Slavery in the Hands of Harvard, Harvard University, 2019 Refraction: New Photography of Africa and Its Diaspora, Steven Kasher Gallery, 2018 MAMI, Knockdown Center, Maspeth, NY 2016 Race&Revolution, Governors Island, NY 2016 The Future Is Forever, International Center of Photography, Mana Contemporary Art Center Jersey City, NJ 2015

Awards 2024: Rome Prize in visual art from the American Academy in Rome 2019: Anonymous Was a Woman Award 2019: Colene Brown Art Prize, BRIC

Collections National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, United States