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Healing Wounds

At the deathbed of his father, Rahim Fortune reflects on the issues shaking his private and public life, as a man of color in the United States.

Taking care of a relative who is dying can cause a shift in the way we look at life itself, and our place within it. In Rahim Fortune’s book and exhibition “I Can’t Stand to See You Cry”, he looks inward and outward as this painful journey becomes an occasion to reflect on his country, shaken by the pandemic and the death of George Floyd.

The self-taught photographer was born to a Native American mother and a black father in the Chickasaw Nation, the only major tribe in Oklahoma that never granted tribal citizenship to its former enslaved people. His own family history is intertwined with the different layers of racism that mark the United States, in a delicate yet powerful work that looks at the future through the cracks of an aching moment.

Rahim Fortune’s “I Can’t Stand to See You Cry” is on view at the
Église des frères prêcheurs
during Arles Festival, until August 28. The homonymous book is published by
Loose Joints
and available at the price of £42.00

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