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What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Zoraida Lopez
Zoraida Lopez Diago is an artist, photographer, and served as the Picturing Black Girlhood assistant curator. Her images have been published in Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, OF NOTE Magazine, GOOD Magazine, World Policy Institute Journal, El Diario, and Democracy Now. She has lectured at institutions including Columbia University, Harvard University, International Center for Photography, and MICA. She is also the co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution, an organization that explores how female visual journalists and lens-based artists translate social and political conditions that impact women and girls into potent and effective imagery. Through her work with Women Picturing Revolution, Zoraida is currently working on a book project titled, Women Picturing Revolution: Representations of Black Motherhood in Contemporary Photography (anticipated Spring 2020 publication). Zoraida studied political science at Trinity College and studio arts at CUNY-Hunter College.
Independent Artist and Curator