Silver Eye

Presented in collaboration with Rainbow Serpent

To be seen for who we truly are is a fundamental human need, especially in societies shaped by white and heteronormative narratives. When guided by openness and empathy, photographic portraiture gives form to this shared desire for visibility.

Ajamu X, a fine art photographer, activist, and scholar, has spent decades advocating for Black LGBTQ+ lives. Using nineteenth-century darkroom techniques, such as the platinum print, his work explores sensuality, gender, sexuality, and queerness. Through this process, he challenges the absence and reductive representation of Black, Brown, and queer bodies in the history of photography.

FIERCE: Pittsburgh honors the city’s Black queer culture as part of a growing global archive, alongside work created in Bristol, UK, and Toronto, Canada. The individuals celebrated in this exhibition are shaping Pittsburgh’s story through their contributions to the creative arts and education, civic and political life, and health activism. At a time when Black, queer, and trans experiences are too often erased, Ajamu X’s portraits and the voices of each sitter offer visibility, inspiration, and kinship within local and global communities.

FIERCE: Pittsburgh is dedicated in celebration of the life of Christopher Smith.

Participating Artist

Ajamu X is a darkroom and fine art photographic artist. His philosophical provocations and aesthetics celebrate Black queer bodies, the erotic senses, pleasure, and the sensual–material attributes of image production. In 2022, he was canonised by The Trans Pennine Travelling Sisters as the Patron Saint of Darkrooms and received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society.

His photographs sit within many private and public collections including: The Rose Art Museum, Gallery of Modern Art, Autograph, Tate Britain, Arts Council of England, Victoria & Albert Museum, The Walker Gallery and Martin Parr Foundation. His work has been exhibited in many prestigious museums, galleries and alternative spaces worldwide.

FIERCE: Pittsburgh at Silver Eye Center for Photography is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. On the significance of this exhibition, the artist reflects:

“FIERCE is part of a lifelong, unfolding global archive in perpetual evolution, and Pittsburgh is its latest iteration. Like FIERCE: London, FIERCE: Toronto, and FIERCE: Bristol, each sitter is a familiar stranger of sorts. I celebrate the undeniable, vital energy of these Black queers who animate and transform the networks of identities they move through in all their beauty, in all their ways.”

About Rainbow Serpent

Rainbow Serpent is a non-profit organization founded by Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd that advances Black LGBTQ culture through the exploration of emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies, and multimedia art.