Nadiya Nacorda: The 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize: 2nd Place Winner
©Nadiya Nacorda
It is with so much pleasure and excitement that we announce the 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize 2nd Place Winner, Nadiya Nacorda. She was selected for her outstanding project, A special kind of double. Nadiya will receive an MFA in Art Photography at Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts in 2021. Her awards include a feature on Lenscratch, a mini exhibition on the Curated Fridge, and a Lenscratch T-shirt and Tote.
The jurors included Guanyu Xu – 2019 Student Prize Winner, Zora Murff- 2018 Student Prize Winner, Shawn Bush – 2017 Student Prize Winner, Drew Nikonowicz – 2016 Student Prize Winner, Elizabeth Moran – 2013 Student Prize Winner, Aline Smithson – Lenscratch Founder & Editor in Chief, Brennan Booker – Lenscratch Director of Special Projects, and Daniel George – Lenscratch Submissions Editor. We had a record number of submissions and the competition was fierce.
Being an older sibling carries its own kind of special burdens and joys. You have a front row seat to all the mishaps, dares, victories, and secrets we all work so hard to hide from the adults in our lives. But as the older sibling, sometimes you feel the weight of responsibility of a parent. You want to give guidance, to reprimand bad decisions, to share in all the nuances of your siblings experiences. Nadiya Nacorda’s series A Special Kind of Double captures this constant push and pull of sibling-hood with tenderness and authority. Her archive of photographs exposes the blurred lines between herself and her family over time, drawing on nostalgia and mundanity to place the everyday experiences of black youth in America at center stage.
Nadiya Imani Loyisa Ntlabati Nacorda is a Blasian artist, photographer and Taurus currently living and working in Syracuse, NY. She was born in Detroit, MI to a Filipinx immigrant father and a Xhosa mother. Throughout the year, she travels around the country photographing her immediate family. Her work heavily draws from notions of intimacy, affection, displacement, and matrilineage within the context of Black and POC immigrant-American family life.
Nadiya received her BFA in Photography & Film from VCU Arts in Richmond, VA. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Art Photography at Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the Midwest Center for Photography, the Detroit Public Library art gallery, RISD’s Red Eye Gallery in Providence, RI, and Candela Books + Gallery in Richmond, VA. She was also a 2019 finalist of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward competition and was selected for the 2020 Lit List: Photographers to watch, hire and exhibit. Nadiya recently released a monograph through Kris Graves Projects.
A Special Kind of Double
“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves
– a special kind of double.” -Toni Morrison
I have spent about a decade photographing my two youngest siblings: Khaya ‘04 and Thandiswa ‘06 throughout their lives. As their older sister of 13 and 15 years, I began documenting their childhood, their growth, from a place of nostalgia. Seeking to create an archive of images to serve as evidence of our existence, significance, and humanity in a world that seeks to erase us.
Although the photographs only feature Thandi and Khaya, it serves as a love letter to all five of my younger siblings. As the eldest child, they are my best friends and my greatest loves. Our special bonds have their own rhythm, power, and magic that only belong to us. This work provides you a glimpse into our world. One full of play and innocence, that grants refuge and solidarity in the face of traumas and struggles unique to us as Black youth in America.
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
©Nadiya Nacorda
Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.
Recommended
-
Amrita Stützle: The 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize Winner Honorable MentionJuly 29th, 2020
-
Leah Schretenthaler: The 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize Winner Honorable MentionJuly 28th, 2020
-
Hannah Altman: The 2020 Student Prize Winner Honorable MentionJuly 27th, 2020
-
Lindley Warren Mickunas: The 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize Honorable MentionJuly 24th, 2020
-
William Camargo: The 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize Third Place WinnerJuly 23rd, 2020
![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](https://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
