Nikole Hannah-Jones on Creating The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience

Nikole Hannah-Jones takes you behind the scenes of The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience. Get a glimpse into the process of creating this beautiful, illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with vivid archival images and newly commissioned artwork that accompanies the powerful essays from the original book.

Get the book: https://1619books.com/

Timestamps
00:00 What was the process of making this book like?
01:11 How did the team source the photography in the book?
03:40 What was the process for commissioning the artwork in the book?
05:38 What is the importance of the new photo essay GHOSTS featured in this book?
07:07 What do you hope readers take from this book?

ABOUT THE 1619 PROJECT: A VISUAL EXPERIENCE

With newly commissioned artwork and archival images, this book is a large-scale illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.

“Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act.” —Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of people stolen from Africa arrived on the shores of Point Comfort, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.

Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.

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