On view at the Emma Darnell Aviation Museum, the exhibition honors Black models who shaped beauty and representation from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Atlanta fashion photographer and Morehouse alum James Hicks has spent the past three years creating new portraits of the Black models who changed fashion history, women like Beverly Peele, Veronica Webb, Alva Chinn, Mounia and Cynthia Bailey. His exhibition, “Moments: Icons, Legends & Muses,” now at the Emma Darnell Aviation Museum and Conference Center, brings those faces together in an installation that feels as personal as it is historic.
For Hicks, the project began as a creative thank-you to those who’ve long inspired him. “Some of the models that I photographed, actually, before I even picked up a camera, I used to draw,” he said. “These are really people that we admired.”
How the installation came together
That spirit of reverence guided how Hicks and his collaborators presented the work. When budget limitations forced him to improvise, he and his longtime friend, creative director David Dela Cruz, reimagined what a photography exhibition could look like.
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