EXHIBITS & PROGRAMS
On Display at the Pittsburgh Public Theater: 11/11/20 - 11/30/20
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
Free To Be Me: A Portrait Series Celebrating Black Girls. In the portraits of 10 African-American girls (ages 11-19), viewers rediscover the qualities of innocence, emotional sensitivity, and uncensored joy that can be denied to young Black girls because of an adultification bias that burdens them with higher expectations and assigns them unjustified motives. “Far too often, Black children — some as young as pre-school age — face Black female caricatures (angry, aggressive, hypersexualized) that have a corrosive effect on their childhood and cause great harm,” says Demeatria Bocccella, exhibit producer and founder of FashionAFRICANA. The Free to Be Me exhibition, presented by FashionAFRICANA in collaboration with WQED Multimedia, serves as a companion and counterpoint to the WQED’s film, Childhood Lost: The Adultification of African American Girls.
The exhibit will be on display on the windows of the Pittsburgh Public Theater in downtown Pittsburgh from November 11, 2020 to November 30, 2020.
COLLABORATIVE PARTNERS
This exhibition is presented by FashionAFRICANA and produced by Demeatria Boccella Productions, LLC in collaboration with WQED Multimedia and Amachi Pittsburgh. In-kind support provided by Pittsburgh Public Theater.
EXHIBIT PHOTOGRAPHS
THE CREATIVE TEAM
GEORGE LANGE
Photographer
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Lange worked for Duane Michals and Annie Leibovitz before establishing his own career. His work has appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Esquire, People, The New York Times and many other publications. He shot many of the iconic images from 90’s TV shows such as Friends, Frazier, Dawson’s Creek, and Seinfeld, as well as ads for TLC hit shows including Cake Boss and Honey Boo Boo. An example of one of his more recent corporate campaigns is a fascinating look at youth sports with Dick’s Sporting Goods.
In 2013, Lange published his first book, The Unforgettable Photograph: 228 Ideas, Tip and Secrets for Taking the Best Pictures of Your Life, an easy-to-understand guide on how to capture meaningful moments. Published by Workman, the book sold more than 50,000 copies, spawned multiple foreign language editions, including Germany, France, Spain, and China, and landed him on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and in publications including Parade, Reader’s Digest, and Wall Street Journal.
The Unforgettable Photograph caught the attention of Instagram and landed him the position of the first Artist in Residence for Creative Shop, the in-house creative agency at Instagram and Facebook. The book also inspired an amazing series of recreations made in Gambia.
In 2018 Lange returned to Pittsburgh with his family. Since then he has worked on projects for the Pittsburgh Symphony, continued his work for Dick’s Sporting Goods, collaborated on a line of clothing based on his archive with Daily Bread, and explored the Pittsburgh community for personal photographic projects.
GAVIN BENJAMIN
Creative Director
Gavin Benjamin is a multifaceted artist who combines original analog photography and appropriated images with collage, paint and varnish to create rich, luxurious works that call back to baroque traditions, but use elements of current culture to provoke, critique, and explore.
Born in Guyana, South America, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Benjamin received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. During this time, he interned with legendary portrait photographer Arnold Newman. Benjamin also worked as black and white and color printer at LTI and Baboo color labs. From there, he went on to work at Edge Reps and Exposure NY, agencies representing commercial and advertising photographers, prop stylists, and hair and makeup artists. After Exposure NY, he went to work as a freelance production coordinator/photo editor with stints at Kenneth Cole productions, Esquire magazine, Hachette Filipacchi Media, and Good Housekeeping magazine.
Benjamin investigates the intersection of culture, media, politics, fashion, and design, addressing questions that (continue to) confront a man of color in America today.
His work has appeared at the Slick Paris, Sotheby’s NY, Architectural Digest Home Design Show, Art Hampton, Affordable Art Fair, Scope Miami, Palm Beach Modern, Context Miami, Context NY, Art Silicon Valley, and the LA Art Fair.
DEMEATRIA BOCCELLA
Producer
As President and CEO of Demeatria Boccella Productions, LLC, Demeatria supports creative excellence by pursuing fresh ideas and programmatic innovation through her signature productions. She instigates, commissions, convenes and otherwise seeks to build communities at the intersection of arts conceptualization, funding, management, performance and education.
As founder of FashionAFRICANA, Demeatria is focused on broadening the standard of beauty and cultivating a more life-giving and globally aware approach to African-inspired fashion and culture. She provides the artistic vision for FashionAFRICANA, which has grown from a regional event to one with national and international reach and appeal. She shared her work with FashionAFRICANA as a speaker at the 28th Annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference at Harvard University in 2019.
Her most recent work includes the production of “Heroes & Sheroes: The Art and Influence of Ruth E. Carter on Black Cinema” in 2018 at the Heinz History Center and the curation of “Costumes of The Wiz Live” exhibition celebrating the work of Tony Award-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell. Designers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers and many other artists have joined the FashionAFRICANA fold.