Early Black Queer Images

Instructor: Alanna Fields | Tuition: $395 (Members) $465 (Non-Members) | Dates: Wednesdays, October 15 - November 19 | Time: 6 - 8 PM ET | Class Size Max: 10

This online course explores Black queer life, identity and history through an intimate engagement with artist and archivist, Alanna Fields' ever-growing archive of found and sourced vernacular photographs spanning the 1900s-1990s. Through photographic excavation the class will examine early self portraiture, photo booth portraits, playbill images, military portraits, and scenes depicting Black queer everyday life and love. Each class explores another layer of history untold and unseen as participants traverse through the archive and contextualize these images as a means of cultural analysis on Black queering in front of and behind the camera. The course will culminate in the creation of original pieces utilizing the source material in the format of each participant's choosing. Participants will leave the course with a deeper, visceral picture of early Black queer life in the U.S.

Alanna Fields (b. 1990, USA) is a distinguished mixed-media artist and archivist whose practice powerfully reimagines Black queer memory through a multidisciplinary engagement with photographic archives. Her work has been presented at major art fairs including Paris Photo, The Armory Show, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Expo Chicago, and featured in exhibitions at renowned institutions such as The Brooklyn Museum, The High Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, MoCADA, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography. Fields has mounted solo exhibitions at Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art and Baxter Street CCNY, and has exhibited with esteemed galleries including Yancey Richardson, Yossi Milo, and David Castillo. A graduate of Pratt Institute’s MFA program in Photography, Fields has lectured at ICP, Penumbra Foundation, Stanford University, and others. She is a Gordon Parks Foundation Scholar and Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee, with residencies at Light Work, Fountainhead Arts, Silver Art Projects, and TILT. Fields has held professorships in Photography at Pratt Institute and currently at Howard University. Fields' work has been commissioned and published by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Aperture. She has been commissioned for major public art projects, most notably a billboard installation for CONTACT Photo Festival in Toronto. In 2025, she published her debut monograph, "Unveiling," a landmark exploration of Black queer photographic archives.