Chilluns’ Croon investigates themes such as absence, remembrance, spirituality, and mortality among formerly enslaved people in Wilson County, North Carolina. This work provides an intimate portrait of an African American community and expresses songs of hope, equality, and change for new generations.
I conducted extensive research on the Wilson County area and established a relationship with Lisa Y. Henderson, curator of the archive Black Wide-Awake, who provided access to documents of genealogical and historical interest related to Wilson County’s African American community. Then, as photographer and historian, me and Lisa Y. Henderson selected files to inspire the imagery essay.
The archive Black Wide-Awake, curated by Lisa Y. Henderson, includes a wide range of files: these include photographs, family diaries, and plantation records, as well as newspaper clippings of obituaries, town crimes, and social events. The archive spans from the mid-1700s through the era of slavery in the 1800s and the segregation era in the 1900s, to contemporary documents detailing new local activists who seek to restore and preserve their African American legacy.
Chilluns’ Croon also incorporates documents such as old transcripts from the Federal Writers Project (FWP) which feature interviews with formerly enslaved African Americans. Together, these documents reveal old spiritual beliefs and stories of love and loss from the periods of slavery and segregation in the United States.
AUTORE
Lens-based artist and researcher from Bogotá, Colombia, Ruiz Gonzalez’s work traverses the paths of documentary, fiction and fine art photography while exploring settings of human behavior and its emotional nexus with the land, capturing tensions between present and memory. His primary subject is the interaction and coexistence between mankind and nature, and how time shapes their relationship.
Ruiz Gonzalez was recently awarded a scholarship to complete the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Program in 2024. He was also selected for the Photolucida Critical Mass 2023 top 50 finalists, and received the En Foco Fellowship program 2023 and the Silver Eye Center Fellowship 2023 special mention. Additionally, he was shortlisted for the Belfast Photo Festival 2023 and recently completed an artist residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY.
In 2022, his project Chilluns’ Croon (2021) received awards, nominations and prizes by Aperture Portfolio Prize, OD Photo Prize, Verzasca Foto Festival, NYFA Fellowship program Film Photo Award, Photo Collective Australia International Prize, Urbanautica institute awards, and The British Journal of Photography. In 2021, he was a City Artist Corp grantee through the NYFA and an artist-in-residence at Eyes on Main Street in North Carolina. In 2020, Ruiz Gonzalez was selected as a grantee for the COVID-19 Writers Project (C19WP), an initiative of The Pulitzer Center and National Geographic. Some of his work was included in 2020: A Year in Photos by The Pulitzer Center and was featured in Inside the Curve, a traveling exhibition organized by National Geographic.Ruiz Gonzalez is the co-founder and editor of Antics Publications, an independent photography publisher based in Bogotá, Colombia, and New York City.