Black photographer time travels by 'slipping into anonymous photos' where history didn't want him

Long after slavery was demolished, the Black people were still facing subjugation in many parts of America. The end of the Civil Rights Movement was a turning point that marked the beginning of a new era for the African American people. However, one cannot forget how several public spaces were off-limits for Blacks back in the early to mid-1900s. Leveraging this aspect, a Black virtual artist and photographer, Omar Victor Diop, from Senegal teamed with British photographer Lee Shulman to reimagine the history, as reported by CNN.  

Named the "Anonymous Project," this innovative concept involves Diop being edited into American family photos from the 1950s and 1960s. In these pictures were public and private spaces where Black people's presence was frowned upon. So, now, this project, later developed into the "Being There" series, opens a window of imagination as to how a non-racial America would have been. Though the creators have no idea about the people in the pictures or their personalities, this project's idea spawned when they noticed an empty seat or space that probably belonged to the person who captured the moments. "There was an absence," emphasized Shulman and that "absence" drove them to bring this project to life.

Schulman related that absence to the exclusion that Black people faced in those days. "Every time I saw that chair, I saw Omar in it," he added. Diop's work mostly spoke of Africans outside of Africa in history and Schulman owned some of these works. Thus, the coalition of these two photographers ended up in a remarkable time travel to America's past that made their way to the Paris Photo Fair in 2023. Diop's Instagram features many of the works from the "Being There" series and one can notice the subtle humor and cheekiness with which it was created.

"We were looking for images that covered a broad spectrum of life because it's a family photo album," Schulman explained. There were pictures of family gatherings, dinner parties, ski holidays, picnics and vacations. Diop is the odd one out in all these pictures and as per Schulman, it shows "a sign of race and class privilege" of those times. Most pictures depicted wealth and affluence that were only accessible to the White people. Diop has a mischievous expression, sitting amid several White gentlemen, playing golf with them and even graduating. The pictures with specific locations and circumstances were chosen by the photographers to indicate the places in history that didn't want Black people.

The interposing of Diop into these vintage pictures wasn't just a simple matter of photo editing. It involved planning in terms of costumes, props and even lighting that matched the setting of those pictures. Their efforts bore fruits, as the pictures look so natural that one would think Diop had indeed traveled to the past. "You can't really compare (being an African in Europe) with what African Americans went through in the same era, but the idea of being different is something they had in common," Diop told the outlet. "Every time I look at these images, even without Omar in them, I feel these people are looking at us and telling us something about history," Schulman added. The photographers believe this project has "a lot of relevance to the world we live in today."

You can follow Omar Victor Diop (@omar_viktor) on Instagram for more artistic content.