Ralph Lemon's Photographs and Videos Trace Emmett Till's Legacy

Ralph Lemon's exhibition 'From Out of Space' at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York runs from February 26 to April 11 and features 13 monochrome photographs alongside three brief videos. The focus is on locations in the Mississippi Delta linked to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. Instead of sensationalizing the event, Lemon captures the physical remnants of these sites, such as Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi (photographed in 2002 and 2018), the barn in Drew where Till was tortured, the Tallahatchie River where his body was discarded, and a funeral home in Tutwiler. The four-and-a-half-minute titular video (2018–21) showcases close-ups of wood structures, aerial views of the river and Bryant's, and a police car with flashing lights. Efforts to formally commemorate these sites have faced difficulties; metal plaques from 2005 have been vandalized or stolen, and the Trump administration is contemplating their removal. Lemon's work, created before and after Dana Schutz's contentious painting 'Open Casket' (2016) at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, fosters a reflective atmosphere rather than glorifying the past. The images of decaying structures evoke a sense of history fading away, contrasting with the more tangible historical landscapes presented by Dawoud Bey.