Featuring work by Dawoud Bey, Lonnie Graham, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis.

Embracing Eatonville is a photographic survey of Eatonville, FL, the oldest black incorporated town in the United States, and a place where celebrated writer Zora Neale Hurston lived and worked. The project is a collaboration among Light Work, the artist’s collective A Social Studies Project (ASSP), and the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville.

Beginning in January 2002 and continuing through the middle of 2003, photographers Dawoud Bey, Lonnie Graham, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis spent time in Eatonville making photographs in an effort to provide a meaningful reflection of Eatonville’s spirit and character, while concentrating on the social, political, and cultural landscape of this historically unique place in Central Florida. In an attempt to address the unique character of the community and its history, these artists have produced a diverse portrait of Eatonville using traditional documentary approaches, as well as interactive and interpretive methods, and viewer, as if each subject is disclosing a secret for the viewer to take in.

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This exhibition was first staged at Light Work in 2003 and is the subject of Contact Sheet 124.
Light Work re-issued a limited-edition portfolio from this exhibition available here.