Read the full article by Ozola Cody at RAM’s New Times Magazine
Susanna Lamaina’s “Revolutionary Grain” photography exhibit opened at the California Museum on Saturday, June 14, only a block or so away from where protestors gathered for the No Kings Rally at the state Capitol. At the museum, a sea of 42 mid-key, full-scale black-and-white photographs depicting former Black Panther Party members as they are today served as a symbolic intersection between the past and present.
Almost 60 years earlier, black-and-white photos of the Black Panther Party marching into the same Capitol building holding rifles in one hand and law books in the other — protesting for their constitutional right to defend Black lives against state violence — spread across covers of major news publications that sensationalized them and exploited public fear. Today, during a time of widespread misinformation, the exhibit’s photos document and preserve a more nuanced memory of American activism.
Lamaina is of Mediterranean descent and grew up in a Southern Italian immigrant community in inner-city Philadelphia during the 1960s. She witnessed the Black Panthers serving children through their free lunch program, which was available to all children regardless of their race.