by Michael Winters
Untitled #33, Jersey City, NJ. © Jon Henry.
In Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, Imani Perry writes, “We wail and cry, how many pietàs?” And a couple pages later: “As a Black mother, when I read about one of those children whose life has been snatched, at first blush I think, ‘That could have been my child.’ But I have demanded of myself that I turn away from such egotism. The truth is that is not my child. My children are here, and they stand with me, to honor their dead.”
Photographer Jon Henry and his portrait subjects have chosen to contemplate what Imani Perry demanded she turn herself from: “That could have been my child.” Jon Henry has made dozens of photographs showing mothers holding their Black sons, not standing, but cradled, or draped over the mother’s legs, as if dead. In his words, these images were, “created in response to the senseless murders of Black men across the nation by police violence.” This ongoing project, which he calls Stranger Fruit, started in 2014, but has recently found new audiences after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The images are arresting, direct and formal compositions made in informal locations. The poses vary, but all are reminiscent of a pietà.
A pietà is a traditional Christian image showing Mary the mother of Jesus holding the dead body of Jesus. By far, the most famous pietà is Michelangelo’s sculpture which sits in St. Peter’s at the Vatican. (It’s worth noting that Michelangelo’s Pietà is also an ethnically-specific image and was also made to directly appeal to his time and place.)
Michelangelo’s Pietà, 1498-1499. St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican
Untitled #10, Flushing, NY ©Jon Henry
By utilizing the pietà motif, Jon Henry is drawing connections between the dead Christ and murdered Black men. He’s drawing connections between Mary’s sorrow and the sorrow of Black mothers who fear for the safety of their sons. These images are working on multiple levels. They are telling what artist Steve Prince calls a poly-narrative, referencing Mary and Jesus, but also clearly referencing living people in America today. The focus here is on the contemporary situation.
Untitled #29, North Miami, FL ©Jon Henry
What do these photographs want from me?
I think these images want me to see these people and respect them. These images request my compassion for all mothers and fathers who feel, “It could’ve been my child.” These are real people in front of our gaze.
The idea from Genesis 1 that people have been created “in the image of God” is familiar to most Christians. Because all people are made in the image of God, all people have equal and great worth. It’s a terrible sin when we fail to recognize the image of God in individuals. Like in so many other areas of American life, African-Americans have experienced disproportionate consequences of this failure.
Jesus is the perfect, unblemished image of God. That image wasn’t blurred by his suffering. In Christ’s suffering he was still the perfect image of God. In Jon Henry’s photographs, the men and boys pictured are posed in the image of the Jesus who suffered. This should help us see the image of God in them. Can we see the image of God in them? Can we see the image of God in other people that look like them? Our increasing ability to see the image of God in every person is a mark of Christian maturity.
And we also must remember what Imani Perry wants us to remember:
“…yes, there is terror, but there is also incredible beauty. And there’s a way in which the repetition of the narrative of the terror almost evacuates the full humanity of their lives, and my life, and also the incredible beauty. And so the question, for me, is both how do we acknowledge the social reality of deep inequality, of mass incarceration, of death of innocent black youth, and also recognize that it’s important to assert and reassert the full humanity and beauty of their lives, and also to offer them a vision of their lives that is meaningful — and a kind of witness that I think actually speaks to the entirety of the human experience.” - Imani Perry, on On Being, Sept. 26, 2019
See more of Jon Henry’s photography at jonhenryphotography.com.