'It's hard to stop rebels that time travel' with Raymond Thompson Jr.

'It's hard to stop rebels that time travel'

Join us via Zoom Wednesday, July 6th, 2022 at 7 pm ET

Can we bend time back on itself through image, text, and narrative? Photographer Raymond Thompson Jr. is aspiring to do just that. “It’s hard to stop a rebel that time travels” is Raymond’s newest re-memory project that stretches across a 240-year period of time beginning with the hidden worlds of borderland maroons living on the margins of plantations in the 18th century to present-day counties surrounding New Bern, North Carolina. The sights and locations in Raymond’s photographs become portals in the landscape allowing us to slip between past, present, and future. For Raymond, portals are not limited to physical doorways but can be seen in the eyes of present-day black people who continue to survive in these places.

Raymond Thompson Jr., is an artist, educator, and visual journalist based in Austin, TX. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has received an MFA in Photography from West Virginia University and a MA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. He also graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a BA in American Studies. He has worked as a freelance photographer for The New York Times, The Intercept, NBC News, NPR, Politico, ProPublica, The Nature Conservancy, ACLU, WBEZ, Google, Merrell, and the Associated Press.

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