Living Well + Documentation
Your choices and your routines allow you to operate in your best self. Even before you begin to contemplate the documentation of your life, it is imperative that you are well and you are honest with yourself about your wellness.
I am continually inspired by my family’s archive and the intentional choices that they made to document their lives, the people they love and the choices that they made.
Tina Campt says, “It is important to read photographs as not only records of choices but also as records of intentions.”
Ask yourself, “How can I be intentional about the life that I am living so that I will be encouraged to document it and also invite others to document it alongside me?”
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You have to define this for yourself. Ultimately, it will be taking care of your mind, body and soul so that when you look back on your documentation, you will be able to find joy easily.
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Now that you are moving in your routines in a way that makes sense for your life.
Choose a frequency that you want document your month.
Monday , Wednesday, Friday
Tuesday and Thursday
Saturday and Sunday
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If you look across your life there are always things that you return to.
You may document your days where you catch up with friends or dinners with your family members. You may have an entire album dedicated to flowers you see on your walk.
You document these things because they are important to you.
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You don’t have to be a photographer, photography can be used a documentation tool.
Documents can include but not limited to: Audio, Video, Letters, Journals
All photos are courtesy of Sierra King / Battle Family Archive unless stated otherwise.
What kind of histories can we write through images?
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Ohia's 16 Birthday
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Priya and Zaria in Aunt Wanda's Kitchen
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Aunt Schersade in Grandmama's Kitchen
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Victor and Dwight II in Grandmama's Living Room
Are you ready to Document Daily?
Frequency
Choose how frequently you want to document. If you don’t have time to document daily right now, that’s okay. It’s your life and you have to understand where it best fits. i.e MON / WED / FRI, TUES/THUR, SAT/SUN
Documentation Type
Choose what type of documentation you will lean into. I love photography and use the huju and my camera regularly but voice notes, videos and audio are all that you utilize as tools to document.
Join me
I’ll be documenting my month alongside you and can’t wait to see how the documentation of your life, your love and practices leads to who you will become.
Check in with me on IG LIVE: EVERY Wednesday until Palestine is free, 7PM EST
COMMIT TO YOURSELF.
*This challenge + pledge was originally designed for December 2021 but it can be used for you to begin creating the habit of documenting your life daily.
Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989
Poets Audre Lorde and Pat Parker first met in 1969; they began exchanging letters regularly five years later. Over the next fifteen years, Lorde and Parker shared ideas, advice, and confidences through the mail. They sent each other handwritten and typewritten letters and postcards often with inserted items including articles, money, and video tapes. SISTER LOVE: THE LETTERS OF AUDRE LORDE AND PAT PARKER 1974-1989 gathers this correspondence for readers to eavesdrop on Lorde and Parker. They discuss their work as writers as well as intimate details of their lives, including periods when each lived with cancer. SISTER LOVE is a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the minds and friendship of two great twentieth century poets.
Image Matters
In Image Matters, Tina M. Campt traces the emergence of a black European subject by examining how specific black European communities used family photography to create forms of identification and community. At the heart of Campt's study are two photographic archives, one composed primarily of snapshots of black German families taken between 1900 and 1945, and the other assembled from studio portraits of West Indian migrants to Birmingham, England, taken between 1948 and 1960. Campt shows how these photographs conveyed profound aspirations to forms of national and cultural belonging.
A Day with Toni Morrison
An interview with a young Toni Morrison. The video also shows Toni Morrison going shopping, at a party, and at work. Her commentary provides an incisive look behind her written words, and at the vision, technique, and lifestyle of this award-winning author. She reads from The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon.
NEXT STEP:
Take your documentation from the month and learn how to build a custodial database.
