Su these hairs coI will strive for freedom. Sandro Miller’s photographs are masterpieces that speak of freedom and rights, of women and stories of distant slavery. They are the black hair, beauty architectures of African American women. His project Crowns it has become a book and collects dozens of shots of faces that become three-dimensional, pierce the page and reach straight to our heart. Braided or loose hair, however hair that photographs rights achieved and roads yet to be conquered.
How the project was born
The American photographer, of Italian origins (the family came from Frosinone) and author of sumptuous projects also with the actor John Malkovich explains: «This work is an intimate focus dedicated to people of all colors, genders, nationalities and religions. I wanted to explore their history, culture, ideologies, origins and social conventions in an effort to construct and complete their psychological portrait, intended both as a fact and as an imagination ». A work of aesthetic and historical research that takes shape in these masterpieces of intertwining, between identity and seriality. The first muse of the project was Claude-Aline Nazaire, the black woman from Haiti whom the photographer married in a second marriage: «My hair is the manifestation of my present, past and always moving soul».
The complaint starts with the hair
Just as in ancient Rome hairstyles marked the transition from republic to empire, and from one emperor to another, so the intense faces photographed by Miller testify to the bumpy roads that led women of color to make history, to change gear to the course of life to achieve an unknown freedom even just a few decades ago. In a multiracial America, but one that peers at the braided hair of a little girl at school or a young woman at a job interview, every portrait of the great artist recognizes and honors the power and beauty of women, while celebrating the their social resistance and their cultural memory, which knows how to go beyond biology and genetics. The large pages, which even to the touch show an uncommon consistency – it seems to touch that hair, to feel its grain – alternate immense eyes that nail each of us to eternal questions about our origins, our rights and Melody, one of the faces that is also told with words, he confesses: «My hair is my glory, they are the essence of my beauty as a woman. They are the infinite richness of my culture as a woman of color ».
The thoughts, the iconic faces, the hairstyles, which become crowns of freedom, also take strength from Miller’s choice to make them emerge from fabrics of bright colors. Those yellows, those greens, those vivid pinks give volume to the hair, to the features that are transformed into sculptures of pride and independence.
Beyond racial hatred
The stories of the individual and the long path to overcome episodes of racial hatred and social oppression are entangled in the hair. This is what African American women have suffered. Miller makes history, before taking photographs. And the faces, framed by braids or by dreadlockannounce a new normalproudly exhibiting a new world with silent and powerful: «now, for women of color, hair is perhaps the most tangible, enduring and obvious vehicle that speaks of memory».