MARCH 11 – APRIL 21, 2021

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA — SOCO Gallery presents LAMENT, a song of sorrow for those not heard, a new series of work by Charlotte-based photographer Linda Foard Roberts.

The series is an ongoing project for Roberts who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellow for the photographs in 2020.   The artist began the work after her son revealed that they had been sitting in the same balcony church pews that had held those enslaved, 160 years before.  The significance of not seeing what lay so clearly before her and the words “silence is loud” weighed heavily on her.  With LAMENT, Roberts tries to acknowledge and confront the grievous history of the South, where she was born and continues to live.  

As a photographer and recorder of tangible moments, Roberts work is deeply personal, rooted in memory, family, local histories combined with philosophical inquiries about life, death, and basic human rights. These images are layered, documenting places that are remnants of this history before they slip through the course of time. The artist is inspired by the thin, ethereal thread that connects us through time and generations.

Roberts began photographing locations in the American South with different lenses, ultimately choosing an 8" x 10" camera and an old Darlot brass barrel lens circa 1860, likely made soon after the Civil War. There are no shutter speeds or f-stops, only a lens cap to remove and replace to allow light to make an exposure.  The artist embraces chance and imperfections, the resulting circular images and fall off. These details transport her and the viewer. The old lens and its own untold history capture pieces of this complex past in the present day. 

The photographs are installed sequentially and metaphorically to move viewers around the gallery confronting this difficult history, towards a place of healing and hope. The photograph Signs of Despair, an image of an ancient oak tree burdened with knots and burls much like tumors, serves as a metaphor for the tragedies it has witnessed during its long life on a plantation. The disjointed image reflects different realities experienced there. In Unseen, sanctuary pews on the first floor of a church juxtaposed with the peeling paint on the ceiling above reference the balcony where the enslaved were required to sit, unseen.  Also depicted in the exhibition are landscapes from several plantations Roberts visited in the South on her journey to find these vestiges of the past. Roberts says, “Here the grieving earth can be felt, as if nature knows the shame of humanity's faults, reflecting the pain of those that suffered. The overgrown branches of Rice Fields offer to placate this history by concealing it, but much like forgetting, the foggy consciousness brought on by the passage of time, we know the healing of time is not enough.” In Silent History, the trees lean towards the light, hoping that the viewer will lean this way as we continue to face this history.  

Hank Willis Thomas's powerful piece, Love Rules, will be presented in conjunction with this exhibition. Roberts was inspired by Thomas’ iconic neon in 2019 and here it becomes a perfect point of reflection on her work. Although their pasts and experiences are drastically different, both of the artists’ work is born out of love for humanity, unity and a hope for healing.

LINDA FOARD ROBERTS (American, B. 1961)

Linda Foard Roberts (b. American, 1961) has exhibited her work internationally in Australia, Guatemala, Argentina, Germany, and throughout the United States. Using 8" x 10" and 5" x 7" cameras and preferring the imperfections of old lenses and the history that is untold within them, her work is metaphorical and layered, intending to cross language and cultural barriers. 

In 2016, Roberts completed her first monograph, PASSAGE, published by Radius Books, debuting at Paris Photo with signings at AIPAD in New York and Hauser and Wirth. This five chapter book comprises a ten-year project and weaves together images and writing which explore the inevitable movement of time in life. Inspired by Wabi-sabi, the Japanese word for finding beauty in imperfection, her work focuses on memory and the acceptance of transience and impermanence. Work from the LAMENT series is included in Deborah Willis’ most recent book, The Black Civil War Soldier (2021).

Roberts' work is currently installed at the Mint Museum Uptown in the exhibition "Responsibility of Representing". Her photographs were recently included in the "W/alls: Defend, Divide, and the Divine" exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, which will travel to the Mint Museum in Spring 2021, and in the exhibition "The Energy of Youth: Depicting Childhood" at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The series, "Passage", was exhibited at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco.  Photographs from this series traveled to 34 venues throughout North Carolina in the exhibition "Telling Our Stories", organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art.  

Roberts is a recipient of a North Carolina Visual Artist Fellowship Grant, and was the speaker for Visionary Women in 2017. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, North Carolina; The Center for Creative Photography, Arizona; The Columbus Museum, Georgia; Davidson College, North Carolina; Gregg Museum of Art and Design, North Carolina; Harry Ransom Center, Texas; The Mint Museum, North Carolina; Museum of Photographic Arts, California; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina; Norton Museum of Art, Florida; Ogden Museum, Louisiana; The collections of Bank of America; Duke Energy; Fidelity Bank; Haarmann & Reimer-Germany; King & Spalding; The Ritz Carlton as well as numerous private collections. She has a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and is a former Core Student of Penland School of Crafts. She lives and works in Weddington, North Carolina and is represented by SOCO Gallery.