- [Announcer] The following program is available with audio description and closed captions.

(bright music) (clapperboard clacks) - My name is Adama Delphine Fawundu, and I'm a photo-based artist based in Brooklyn, New York.

And I've been doing photography since 1993.

- [Russ] Yo, what's up people?

This is Russell Frederick.

- [Zaca] Yo, and I'm Anderson Zaca.

- [Russ] Yo, we are here live from the darkroom in Brooklyn.

- [Zaca] We have some guests for you.

- [Russ] Every episode really take it back and show y'all some culture.

- [Zaca] With photographers, masters, legendary print makers who are going to come into the darkroom with us.

- [Russ] Tune in to Zaca and Russ, live from the darkroom.

We are here with Adama Delphine Fawundu.

She is a photographer, an artist born in Brooklyn.

Family is from Sierra Leone.

Ms. Fawundu is an assistant professor of visual arts at Columbia University.

- [Zaca] Her works can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Princeton University, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

- [Russ] She is taking you through this journey outdoors in the sunlight with her experimental techniques.

Through those techniques, you are going to see many layers of history, of culture, and spirituality.

- All right, Delphine, talk to us about what we are about to look at right now.

- Okay, so we're going to look at some photo lumens.

And photo lumens are a very old process from the 1830s.

These are made without a camera.

So it's a camera-less process and not a darkroom process, right?

So we use the sun as our lightroom.

I thought about the process of making prints on fabric, right?

And my grandmother, Adama, she did a whole bunch of tie dying and batiking.

And the process was women gathering together and stamping the fabric and then also letting the sun play a role in the drying of the fabric.

So in a way, the sun is processing the fabric as well.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Right, right, right.

- So I thought about that as, you know, even the whole sitting on the ground.

I like to be low when I'm working.

Like I like to be, you know, grounded.

- The earth.

- Yes.

And I use water in these too.

And then like the final thing is to add some ink.

And I made some plates, right?

So the way I grind it into, what is like, wood blocks, but they're linoleum blocks that I carved in designs into.

- To create a multimedia process?

- Yes.

- In which you incorporate photography.

- Yes, like, photography and block printing.

And I guess this is also considered collage, right?

But I think that the energy knows what it wants to make.

And, you know, when I started looking at the... What was coming out, it just looks old.

And I feel like it comes from spirit.

It definitely comes from spirit.

It comes from some type of intuition, some old intuition, some old language.

So I'm using the photo lumen process, right?

Which came about in the 1830s.

William Talbot, what he was doing back then was using flowers to get imprints onto photo paper without, you know, a camera-less process, right?

So I started thinking about the idea of being in communication with my grandmother's fabric and how can I take textures from her fabrics all from batik fabric and make positives out of them to then make photograms onto photo paper.

Now I like this process of being out in the sun because normally when the hand dying process is happening, it's something that takes place outside.

We are usually in the darkroom because we don't want to expose things that are sensitive to light.

But in this case, I'm using the sun as my light room, right?

It's the opposite, right?

(laughs) And the paper is still light sensitive but because I have things that are blocking out, making a... What is it, like a relief or whatever from the actual templates that I've made, the sun is going to process it.

So this is like a camera-less process where I'm kind of not- - [Zaca] It's like you print at home.

- Exactly.

So I'm going to put this down just over like that.

I'm going to add this here underneath and put a little bit of water.

I like to see what water does to it.

Adds some texture to it.

So I'm going to take this up here.

It's already processing, which is interesting.

This pink color.

It's just water.

- Just for the texture?

- Yeah.

Just for the texture because it's already developing even without the water.

But I wanna try something different today and I wanna put some water over this and see if it will reflect.

Once this dries up, I'm going to ink up some of these templates that I made.

It looks like some indigenous language or something, right?

So I see water in this one.

It's so interesting.

And this one, I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out this one here.

This series comes from a series that I call "For Mama Adama," you know?

So this is me using some of her prints, but also mine.

And then kind of laying them together to be in conversation.

But it's about my grandmother, but it's also about our ancestors as people of African descent.

So I always use myself as a symbol and my story's a symbol to connect it to the larger symbol of Africa and the diaspora.

- How did you even come up with this genius concept?

Were you just experimenting?

Were you trying to do some things in the traditional darkroom?

Like why didn't you do this digitally?

- I wanted my hand to be in it.

- Gotcha.

- When my grandmother made her work and people would walk around with the gowns on with the fabric that she made, they would say her hands was in it, meaning that you could look at it and you could tell like, this is her, this is her way, this is her language.

And I wanted my hands to be a part of, you know, making something.

- It was her artistry.

- Yes.

- So it felt like they were wearing the piece of art- - Exactly.

Exactly.

- From grandma.

- So when you look at these like, I don't think that anybody could replicate these.

I can't ever replicate those.

(laughs) - [Zaca] It's impossible to replicate.

How do you get that gold toning if the gold toning has to do with the exposure in the sun?

- Yeah, the gold toning has to do with the sun.

Yeah, that's the thing that brings out- - [Zaca] Look at this, right?

Unfiltered.

- Yeah, exactly.

- And would you happen to know how long each exposure is?

Or kind of that gives you that darker versus the lighter tone of gold?

- I feel like the longer that you leave it, the stronger the tone is.

And for these, they've been out for a long time, and I did different things to them.

- [Russ] Okay, a long time.

Like- - Like maybe two, three hours.

- Okay, okay.

And are they for sale, right?

- They are, but that I haven't thought about yet.

Because do you realize- - You wildin'?

- No, no, but the interesting thing... No, no!

(Russ and Zaca laughing) This is an interesting thing, right?

People have- - Yes, talk to us about that.

- Asked about sales but when this leaves me, it's gone.

It's not like I could go and print- - This is one of one.

- Another one in the darkroom.

- That's right.

- And you're very attached to it.

- This is why it is, you know, it's not necessarily, it can't be a limited edition.

This is a piece of art.

This clearly- - This is what it is, yeah.

- It is one of one.

- [Delphine] They all have their own thing and I'm just getting to know them even though, yes, it's good to sell work.

To me, the process and making them is really the beauty.

(funky music) - [Zaca] Here's what I'm confused.

The fabric is glued to it?

- [Delphine] No- - [Zaca] It's just the screen printing of the fabric?

- [Delphine] Okay, the black and white part, that was made in the darkroom.

I exposed it, did everything, put it in the developer style back for fixing.

- And that was a fabric though, right?

The black and white?

- But to make that, what I did is I actually scanned in the fabric.

- You scanned the fabric.

- Then turned it into black and white and then Photoshop made it into a negative, then printed it out on a transparency.

So now the transparency becomes my negative.

It was to size.

Like I made them big.

- Got it, so it's just like making a contact sheet.

- Right, exactly.

- Exactly.

These exposed for a long time because if you can look, you could actually see the grains from the negative in there.

- [Russ] Yeah, you're right.

- [Delphine] I really wanted it to pick up that texture.

(chill music) So we're looking at a picture of Nas and Biggie.

And when I look at this, I think about my start as a photographer in New York City.

I was really interested in hip hop culture 'cause I was hip hop culture.

(laughs) I grew up in- - You still are hip hop?

- I still am hip hop.

I feel like everything I do is hip hop.

The methods of language making and all of that, right?

And at the time, I was just fixed on telling a story about hip hop.

I saw hip hop culture as being similar to jazz and the blues.

And what I saw was the way that photographers were documenting jazz and the blues, and I'm like, "Oh, this is storytelling."

I could do this and I could just be here as things are happening in New York City, and just photograph them and tell stories.

This series is called "In the Face of History."

So this project is really more so about the way the audience is engaging with it.

And then also this idea of kind of, is this person a witness?

Are they a spectator?

You know, how are they interacting with these histories?

Some of the histories they were written out of, but now they're right there in the face, right?

And so I think about that a lot, right?

- What I thought about was how history turned they back on us and the Black woman.

- That's it too but now it's kind of you turned your back but here I am.

- Exactly.

And also too, i thought about you going back into history.

- [Delphine] Yeah, exactly.

- Is this got to do with photography because this is a... Or maybe a painting and then this is also printmaking?

- Yeah, this is started as a photo and then I made the screen out of it and then put it onto the documents, because it's almost like a stamp.

- This really makes me angry.

I'm looking at this Black family over here about to be sold.

I also have a feeling they're separated.

- [Delphine] Of course.

- This man can't even protect his wife and his kids.

And I'm thinking about this fricking treachery of this country.

- [Zaca] It's the brilliantness.

How did you have this idea?

- [Delphine] That's the thing, it's like, how do they come?

It just comes to me.

(laughs) You just divine like that.

You were born like that.

- God-given.

God-given.

- Flawless.

- Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

- I was born like this.

- Yeah, like that, you know.

- For real?

- In my mind, right, like, with this one, I was really thinking, "Okay, I wanna do something that's really simple screen print."

But I know my obsession with history and then it's always a question, what would happen if I actually screen print it over the documents?

But I didn't think about it in the way that I'm seeing it.

Like all of that extra stuff comes later and once you catch onto it, you're like, "Oh my god, this makes sense."

(Russ and Zaca laughing and yelling) - [Russ] We having fun.

Black excellence.

Yo, we learning.

Thank you, Adama, for blessing us.

We are the Darkroom MCs.

- [Zaca] Thank you for watching.

(funky hip hop music) (funky hip hop music continues) (funky hip hop music continues)