- On View
- Visual Arts Gallery
- Museum Maps
- Objects in this Location
- Exhibition
- Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.
- Photograph by
- Flash, Lola, American, born 1959
- Subject of
- Flash, Lola, American, born 1959
- Date
- 2019
- Medium
- ink on paper
- Dimensions
- H x W (sheet): 50 × 40 1/16 in. (127 × 101.7 cm)
- H x W (image): 48 3/8 × 37 15/16 in. (122.8 × 96.3 cm)
- Caption
- Throughout the self-portrait series syzygy, the vision, photographer Lola Flash dons a space helmet, an orange prison uniform, and handcuffs. “Heavy on my mind is America’s mass incarceration and the question of breaking free,” Flash writes of the series, which also reflects several years of personal interactions with the police. Flash was arrested in 2008 “for walking while Black.” Flash’s teaching license was suspended, leading to unemployment. Although syzygy, the vision, began as a response to Afrofuturism, it expanded with the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s killing to include themes of mass incarceration and documentary photographs of Black Lives Matter protests.
- Description
- An inkjet self-portrait depicting the photographer, Lola Flash, as a lone figure against a landscape of water and distant mountains. They wear a bright orange prison uniform and futuristic white helmet with blue visor. Bright orange handcuffs are locked around their right wrist with the other cuff dangling free. Shown from the hips up, they stand at a three quarter turn away from the viewer, their arms crossed in front their chest, gazing into the distance. There are no prints or inscriptions, front or back.
- Place depicted
- Woodstock, Ulster County, New York, United States, North and Central America
- Portfolio/Series
- syzygy, the vision
- Classification
- Photographs and Still Images
- Movement
- Afrofuturism
- Type
- portraits
- inkjet prints
- Topic
- Art
- Black geographies
- Freedom
- Identity
- LGBTQ
- Photography
- Prisons
- Race discrimination
- Credit Line
- Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, purchased through the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
- Object number
- 2021.57.3
- Restrictions & Rights
- © Lola Flash
- Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.




