COLLABORATORS

The Artists

Chris Johnson (Co-Director) originated the Question Bridge concept with a 1996 video installation he created for the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Malcolm X library in San Diego, CA. In 1994, he co-produced and directed The Roof is on Fire with Suzanne Lacy, which was broadcast on KRON. His fine art photography has been widely exhibited and published and is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum, and the Center For Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ. Additionally, he authored The Practical Zone System: for Film and Digital Photography, currently in its 5th edition. Johnson is a full Professor of Photography at the California College of the Arts where for ten years he served as President of the Faculty Senate. From 1997-2000 he was Director of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography. From 1999-2003, Chris was Chair of the City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission. He also conceived of and served as Project Manager for the Media Wall in Terminal 2 of the Oakland International Airport.

Hank Willis Thomas (Co-Director) is an artist working with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. He received his BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and his MFA in photography, along with an MA in visual criticism, from California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Thomas has acted as a visiting professor at CCA and in the MFA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art and ICP/Bard and has lectured at Yale University, Princeton University, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. His work has been featured in several publications including 25 under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (CDS, 2003), 30 Americans (RFC, 2008) as well as his monograph Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008). He received a new media fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and was an artist in residence at John Hopkins University. He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad. Thomas' work is in numerous public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Museum of Modern Art. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Oakland International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California, and the University of California, San Francisco. Thomas is a 2011 fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, NY.

Bayete Ross Smith (Co-Producer) is a multimedia artist, photographer, and arts educator. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally by the San Francisco Arts Commission at San Francisco City Hall, the Oakland Museum of California, MoMA P.S.1, the New Museum, Duetsche Bank, Rush Arts Gallery, the Goethe Institute (Ghana), and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland). His collaborative film with the Cause Collective screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Bayete's accolades include an FSP/Jerome Fellowship, fellowships and residencies with the Laundromat Project, the McColl Center for Visual Art, the Kala Institute, and Can Serrat International Art Center (Barcelona). He began his career as a photojournalist for Knight-Ridder Newspaper Corporation in the 1990s. His photographs have been published in numerous books and magazines, including the cover of DisIntegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (2009), Black: A Celebration of A Culture (2005), The Spirit Of Family (2002); SPE Exposure: The Society of Photographic Education Journal, Black Enterprise, and Working Mother magazine. As an educator, Bayete teaches college students and mentors youth through the International Center of Photography, California College of the Arts, Baltimore Heritage, Alternative Roots, and other organizations.

The Producers

Delroy Lindo (Executive Director) has had many memorable roles in films such as David Mamet's Heist and as Mr. Rose in The Cider House Rules. He garnered critical acclaim for his role as Rodney in Spike Lee's drama Clockers; and also worked with Lee on Crooklyn and Malcom X, earning an NAACP Image Award nomination, for his work as West Indian Archie. His other notable film credits include the English period drama, Wondrous Oblivion; The Core; The Last Castle; Domino; The One; Gone in 60 Seconds; Ransom (Best Supporting Actor NAACP Image Award nomination); A Life Less Ordinary; Get Shorty; Feeling Minnesota; Romeo Must Dies; L'Exil du Roi Behanzi; Devil's Advocate; Bright Angel; Mountains of the Moon; This Christmas (also executive producer); and Pixar's Up!. Television: Most recently starred in the Fox drama, The Chicago Code. Starred also in series, Kidnapped (NBC). Lindo was featured in Law and Order: SVU (2009 NAACP Image Award); Lackawanna Blues (HBO) and in The Exonerated (Court TV). He appeared to critical acclaim in the CBS drama Profoundly Normal; starred as US Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas in the Peabody Award winning Strange Justice (Showtime); and starred to critical acclaim as baseball legend Satchel Paige in HBO's stirring drama, Soul of the Game. Lindo also starred as Arctic explorer Matthew Henson in Glory and Honor (TNT) and appeared in First Time Felon (HBO). Also for TV, Lindo conceived, produced, hosted, directed and co-edited documentary interviews featuring Spike Lee, Charles Burnett and Joan Chen. In theatre, Lindo was most recently seen as Bynum, in London's Young Vic 2010 production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Also in London, he appeared in The Exonerated. On Broadway, Lindo appeared as Herald Loomis in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, receiving Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations; and Master Harold and the Boys,(Broadway & National Tour). He played Walter Lee in the Kennedy Center and Los Angeles productions of A Raisin in the Sun (Helen Hayes Award Nomination and NAACP Image Award, Best Actor). Lindo has also worked Off-Broadway, and extensively in regional theatres throughout the United States and Canada. As director, Lindo won a 2006 Los Angeles Theater Weekly Award for his work onMedal of Honor Rag. He also directed Tanya Barfield's Blue Door and Joe Turner's Come and Gone to critical and commercial success at Berkeley Repertory Theater.

A 2000 MacArthur Fellow, University Professor Deborah Willis, Ph.D (Executive Producer) is Chair of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she also has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. A 2005 Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow, and an artist, she is one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture. Her projects include Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers-1840 to the Present, The Black Female Body in Photography. Her most recent works are Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, Michelle Obama, The First Lady in Photographsy, and garnered Dr. Willis 2010 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography.

Kamal Sinclair (Co-Producer) is an artist, director, and producer; adept at balancing the creation and business of art. She has worked on consulting and producing projects for the Woodruff Arts Center, Fractured Atlas, Hank Willis Thomas, and other entities that led to effective outcomes (e.g. over $12 million in funding for arts and arts education initiatives.) Her professional career began as a cast member of the Off-Broadway hit STOMP, but her entrepreneurial skills were honed in her role as founding artistic director of Universal Arts, which produced numerous productions including: The Beat and Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She served as the artistic director for events featuring Jamie Fox, Wynton Marsalis, Ludacris, Michael Jackson, Jim Hensen Muppet Company, Edward James Olmos, and more. She had the distinct honor of serving on Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's Special Events Council, the Fractured Atlas board, the Children's Theatre Company of NYC board, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Ambassador's Council for Atlanta. Finally, she educates artists about entrepreneurship through numerous organizations like the Savannah School of Art and Design (SCAD). Kamal obtained her BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated with honors from Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business MBA program.