In 2016, the Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop began what he calls the “liberty project”, dramatising in his studio defining moments of black history. This picture, dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Martin, is the most recent of the events that he portrays. As in all of his pictures, Diop casts himself as the teenager, just as he depicts himself in the shoes of Senegalese second world war soldiers, Black Panther members or freedom marchers at Selma, exploring a common thread within struggles for racial justice separated in time and space.
It is 10 years ago this month that Martin was shot and killed by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Martin, 17, was on his way home to his father’s house in Sanford, Florida, from a local store where he had bought iced tea and a bag of Skittles sweets. It took six weeks before Zimmerman was arrested and charged with the killing after a petition that attracted more than 2m signatures; when Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder the verdict sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
