Silver Gelatin Print
101.6 x 76.2 cm


Rashid Johnson created a fictional secret society of African-American intellectuals, a cross between Mensa and the Masons, entitled The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club.

The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Kiss) is one of about twenty black and white photographs existing of its members, this photograph is a double exposure of a black man in glasses, wearing a suit and tie. Where the tips of his two noses overlap, his skin has turned white. This photograph is one of several images that involve doubling and are, in part, inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 sociological text "The Souls of Black Folk".
On his second trip to Africa, when he was twenty-three, Johnson went to the home of Du Bois, who has expatriated himself to Ghana late in life. "Du Bois" talks about the idea of double consciousness, explains Johnson. "When you are American and black, you traffic through those two identities'. – Excerpt from Sarah Thornton's "33 Artists in 3 Acts"


*1977 in Chicago, USA | Living and working in New York, USA