First of a trilogy of books devoted to the African Americans issue, Sculptures Vol. I. is an intimate and conceptual narrative of the greatest manifestation of African Americans from the Martin L. King times. Photographs taken at Washington December 13, 2014, more precisely during the protest on civil rights which took place in the capital after the clashes and deaths of Ferguson, combine the political motivation an intimate dimension of the project linked to the author’s personal life.

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Photographer’s note

The Black Diary is a notebook I chose to purchase in Washington, D.C. on December 12, 2014, the day before the “March for Justice” held in the capital following the fatal shooting and the civil unrest that began in Ferguson. I invited people who had come to Washington to leave a personal testimony—an inscription of their presence—so as to gather traces of their physical and emotional involvement in that specific moment of American history. Images of the demonstration are collected and transformed into sculptures.

Editor’s Note

Sculptures by Alessandro Rizzi is a book whose photographs were shot over the timespan of a few hours in Washington D.C. on December 13, 2014, and more precisely, during the civil rights protests that took place in the capital after the fatal shooting and civil unrest originating in Ferguson. Rizzi gives back a sharp and paradigmatic work on American society as a whole, and on the importance of a political demonstration that is a sign of the times and is coherent to its prescribed script, he plays with the fragments and cracks of what could be a historic moment for the struggle of the black community but that does not appear to be so: the sculptures at play in this event are part of a larger scenario that provides for their presence and contribution as actors both united and alone. This kind of structural weakness of the human element does not manifest in what is portrayed in the photographs which always appears to be plastic and structured, but instead lives within this visual paradox, as testimony to the distance in the union, and a fragility, despite the solidity, structure, and plasticity within each one of us.

Sculptures is collected by M.o.M.A, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oslo National Academy of Arts Library, Chicago SAIC J. Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Lafayette Art Books Collection, Swarthmore Art Books Collections.