USF Contemporary Art Museum Presents Davis Photographs, Archives

Press release from USF Contemporary Art Museum:

Dec. 20, 2020

The USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the USF Institute for Research in Art in the College of The Arts, will present a new and unique exhibition entitled, Still Here: The Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives in Context, on Friday, January 22, 2020 starting with a virtual Zoom-based reception at 6 pm. Griffith J. Davis (1923-1993) was an artist internationally acclaimed for “painting” memorable masterpieces. His preferred media for creating his outstanding imageries were the camera, the pen and typewriter rather than a paint brush and canvas. A pioneer international photographer, journalist, U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer, and photo-documentarian, Mr. Davis’ artistic and iconic photographs capture historical moments and figures, lifestyles, personalities and people across a spectrum of political, socio-economic and artistic sectors at the vortex of the Civil Rights Movement and the Independence Movement of Africa. His rarely seen 1939 to 1988 era photographic imagery of his groundbreaking life and photographic practice will be fully placed in context with thematically complementary contemporary artworks by artists Romare Bearden, Emory Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Deana Lawson, Zanele Muholi, and Hank Willis Thomas.

The exhibition will be on view through March 6, 2021. Reservations will be required to visit USFCAM; masks and social distancing are required on campus. Check cam.usf.edu for reservation information and opening status. The exhibition will be available to view online at cam.usf.edu.

In keeping with the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s definition of artists, poets, philosophers, writers and musicians as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”, the explosion of expressions of art represented by photographs, collages, lithographs and digital prints from these artists brings additional layers of depth to the collective imagery displayed. Romare Bearden is an American artist, author, and songwriter, who worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Emory Douglas is hailed as a revolutionary graphic artist for using as inspiration his former membership as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, to create iconography to represent black-American oppression. Jacob Armstead Lawrence is an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life especially in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Deana Lawson is an American artist, educator and photographer whose revolves primarily around issues of intimacy, family, and spirituality. Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Hank Willis Thomas is an American conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Thomas is the son of Deborah Willis, a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, who was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. Ms. Willis considered Griff Davis to be one of her mentors.

Combining his skills as photojournalist and filmmaker into his 35 year career as a diplomat specializing in international development communications for ultimately the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Liberia, Tunisia, Nigeria and across Africa, Mr. Davis was able to use his art forms to impact emerging and existing “legislators” and policymakers across continents while nurturing common ground between different cultures and mindsets. An Atlanta, Georgia native during the Jim Crow era, his internal lens informed his external eye in ways that enabled his perspective to influence the key influencers with whom he regularly rubbed elbows in that era. They included his professor, mentor, landlord and lifelong friend Langston Hughes; jazz legends Duke Ellington and Bud Powell; singer Lena Horne; actor Sidney Poitier; friend and Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King, Jr.; Liberia’s President William V.S. Tubman, Ethiopia’s Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie; Ghana’s Founding Father and first Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and Tunisia’s Founding Father President Habib Bourguiba, President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon and, of course, the people and the artists of the countries in which he lived and served.

In the Tampa Bay area, Mr. Davis was awarded posthumously the Lifetime Achievement Impact Award by the Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts at the organization’s 31st Annual Impact Awards (Virtual) Program on October 1, 2020. In addition, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA) exhibited “Griff Davis- Langston Hughes, Letters and Photographs, 1947-1967: A Global Friendship” from January to August 2020.

Still Here: The Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives in Context is curated by Dorothy M. Davis, President of the Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives, Christian Viveros-Fauné, CAM Curator-at-Large, and Noel Smith, Deputy Director of CAM, and is organized by the USF Contemporary Art Museum. The exhibition will open with a virtual, Zoom-based reception at 6pm on January 22, and will be on view through March 6, 2021.

The exhibition is supported by a USF Understanding and Addressing Blackness and Anti-Black Racism in Our Local, National, and International Communities Grant, Susana and Yann Weymouth, Mort and Sara Richter, the Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation, and the Florida Department of State.

This press release was produced by USF Contemporary Art Museum. The views expressed here are the author's own.