Johanne Rahaman is a documentary photographer working in both digital and film formats since 2002. Her most recent body of work, an ongoing photographic archive of shifting urban and rural spaces occupied by the Black communities throughout the State of Florida, consists of environmental portraits, landscape, architectural and still life images, underscoring the urgency and importance of recording neighbourhoods that are in a constant state of flux. She started documenting these communities that mirror her hometown-the stigmatized Laventille Hills of Trinidad, out of a sense of duty to offer the public an alternative view of working class Black neighbourhoods as a sense of place-as home, in a project called BlackFlorida. Compelled by a lack of nuance or positive representation of Black communities in media, this project offers a snapshot of everyday moments, highlighting entrepreneurship, beauty, sensuality, aging, mortality, youth, and resilience, as she seeks to amplify the silenced and marginalized Black working class. At completion, these images will be repatriated to the communities in which they were created via a trust, to serve as a bridge to the existing archives throughout the state, offering a broader narrative of Black life in Florida.
Website
http://www.blackflorida.org/
