J O I N U S : D O C U M E N T A R Y M A T T E R S
In celebration of Black History Month
Retrospective: Spirit of a People
by Collette V. Fournier
Introduced by Lisa DuBois
Virtual presentation via Zoom
Tuesday, February 28, 7:00 - 8:30 pm ET
Photo by Collete V. Fournier. New Haven, CT. Amistad sendoff of Donald George and crew embarking on a world wide tour including Nova Scotia, London, and Sierra Leone. June 21, 2007.
Collette V. Fournier’s “Retrospective: Spirit of a People” is a historic embodiment of four decades of her photography archives. The hour and a half presentation with a Q&A takes the viewer from black and white to color imagery and from film to digital capture. Fournier’s serial works explore themes of The Amistad: From Mystic Seaport to Nova Scotia; post Hurricane Katrina; travels to West Africa, Jamaica, and the African American community in the US.
Free and open to the public but registration is required.
Collette V. Fournier
Collette V. Fournier has an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College and a BS from Rochester Institute of Technology in Biomedical Photography Communications and Illustration. Born in Harlem, she grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, NY. She is a staff photographer emeritus from Rockland Community College and an adjunct professor in the photography department.
Fournier has worked as a staff photographer for the Rockland Journal-News, the Bergen Record, about...time magazine, and has freelanced for the New York Post. Fournier was selected by the University of Rochester to photograph three educational tours to Senegal, West Africa and Mali and more recently has traveled to Ghana, Togo and Benin with Chiku Awali African Dance and Culture. She also operates Collette Fournier Photography providing weddings, family portraits, documentation, stock photography, tabletop photography books, magazines, freelance and commercial services.
Fournier curated several exhibitions including “There is a World Through Our Eyes: Perceptions and Visions of the African American Photographer.” She has exhibited at Rockland Community College, Arts Alliance of Haverstraw, and Rockland Center for the Arts. Fournier has had fourteen one-woman exhibitions and has participated in over forty group exhibitions.
Fournier is an active member of Kamoinge Inc., an African-American photography collective. Through Atria Books, Kamoinge published Sweet Breath of Life, a poetic narrative of the African American family edited by Frank Stewart with writer Ntozake Shange and included photographs by Fournier. As a Soros Fellow, she documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Fournier is a member of Society for Photographic Education (SPE) and was honored by the American Association of University Women for her photography. She received the Artist of Year Award by the County Executive Arts Awards and Arts Council. Her photography archives can be seen in the Social Documentary Network. Her photography work is collected in Photography Collections Preservation Project (PCCP), Finkelstein Memorial Library, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Smithsonian Institute, Women International Archive, and in private collections.
Co-sponsor:
