This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
The following is an artist's interpretation of the year - how it was or how it might be, through the lens of art.
George Floyd's murder occurred just after I spent several months photographing on and around the landscapes of former plantation sites in Louisiana, at which time I had been forced to stop photographing and go into quarantine because of Covid-19. For me, Floyd's death at the hands of a white police officer reverberated with the history embedded in the landscape where I'd been spending those months, calling its history of gratuitous violence and disregard for Black life back into view. But this time, the world responded with an outrage suggesting that continued disregard for Black life, and its various recurring contemporary manifestations, would not be condoned or ignored. Returning to Louisiana recently only reinforced my belief that we forget history at our own peril, and that calling it to remembrance - as I do in my work - keeps us alert and responsive to the presence of those horrific pieces of a past, which, left untended, can return to haunt us yet again.
