[Untitled] (Crowd/The Fire Next Time)

2000

In this piece, spelled out in sparkling coal crystals are the words “something in me wondered ‘What will happen to all that beauty?’” This quotation, from a 1962 essay by James Baldwin (reprinted the following year in the volume The Fire Next Time), is set over a blurred black-and-white image of the Million Man March, a gathering of black social activists in Washington, D.C., in 1995. The accumulation of crystals suggests the mass of participants in this historic event as viewed from above, while the juxtaposition of Baldwin’s words with the image of the march—separated by more than three decades—reminds us of the still-ongoing dialogue about race in America.