Responding to a comment by a “non-artist acquaintance” that “avant-garde art doesn’t have anything to do with Black people” – and to prove that it did – in September 1983, artist Lorraine O’Grady took her camera to the “largest Black space she could think of” – the African American Day Parade in Harlem, New York, to document the crowds for her series Art Is … Hiring a gold fabric-covered float, complete with a giant gilded frame, O’Grady instructed 15 actors and dancers, all dressed in white, to reach out to the excited onlookers and have them pose inside empty gold picture frames.
With her camera, under the glittering sunlight, O’Grady shot celebratory images of people of all different ages and myriad personalities, ranging from energetic locals to those in a moment of reflection, taking everything in. But it is the group of young girls in Girlfriends Times Two, smiling from ear to ear with their hands gripped tight to the gold edges – confidently showing that they belong in these frames – that I find the most joyous.
