Ascent

This pair of photographs—part of John Edmonds’s Du-Rags series—focuses on the headpiece as both a symbol of Black identity and as a means of suggesting a spiritual, majestic sense of being. The artist, who likens the du-rag to a crown, photographed sitters whom he encountered along Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. The images emphasize the sitters’ vulnerability as well as the du-rag’s softness, echoed by the delicate silk surfaces of the works themselves, in a way that counters often-stereotyped views of Black masculinity.