Photography of ‘Interference’ explores representations of black people

The latest exhibition at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) is all about social perception of minority groups, particularly black men and the black community; true to the subjects’ challenges, it “resists any kind of easy seeing.”

Interference, coming to PPAC’s free public gallery March 9 through May 20, features two artists.

Philadelphia’s Andre Bradley, who received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015, adapted his previous Dark Archives series for the PPAC show. Using family photos, found images, his own photos, and a collection of texts, Bradley “attempts to upset the linguistic and visual constrictions placed on Black communities throughout history,” exploring what it means to be black in America today.

Brooklyn-based painter and photographer Paul Anthony Smith, a Jamaica native, takes a multilayered approach to his images, artistically and narratively. He combines photography, collage, silkscreen printing, and picotage (“a new form of documentary photography” that involves removing pieces of a photograph’s top layer in an exacting pattern) to create uniquely textured images that are as familiar and evocative as they are inscrutable.

They’re windows into the artist’s and subjects’ experience, and a reminder that it’s impossible to understand a person by looking at just one image.

According to PPAC, Bradley and Smith “explore experiences of selfhood and community as inseparable from the stereotypes and violence that pervade representation of black people.”

Interference will be at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, 1400 N. American Street, Philadelphia, March 9 through May 20, with an opening reception and artist talk on March 9 from 6 to 8pm.