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PHOTOGRAPHS BY WAYNE LAWRENCE
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By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences
In mid-January, amid a global pandemic, photographer Wayne Lawrence set out on a coast-to-coast road trip to make portraits of people featured in journalist and Nat Geo Explorer Michele Norris’s Race Card Project. (The decade-long project has prompted more than 500,000 people to write—in just six words—about their experiences with race.
Wayne jumped at the chance to provide images for these blunt, honest words. “With all that was happening in the world, this assignment felt like an opportunity to put my energies into something positive.”
Pictured above is Wayne’s image of Kelly Stuart-Johnson, holding a 1995 image of her mother and stepfather. Kelly’s six-word answer about race and her life: “He’s my dad, not the gardener.”
To stay safe during COVID-19 for the people he was photographing, Wayne drove from his home in Detroit to the East Coast and then to the West Coast until he was running out of time. Nearly exhausted already from the driving, a once-in-a-century winter storm in Texas forced him to cancel a leg of his trip.
“This is a testament to Wayne’s commitment,” says his editor, Todd James. “He doesn’t like being in the spotlight. Wayne genuinely wants the focus to be on the people in the collaborative portraits he makes, and to let those photographs speak for themselves.” (Below left, Race Card contributor Gene Tagaban, who is Cherokee, Tlingit, and Filipino. At right, Esayas Mehretab, who had a frightening encounter with police after entering college.)
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