ELONTE DAVIS:
Born on Detroit’s East Side, Elonte Davis says he picked up a camera and never put it down. He carries the instrument like his keys – never leaving the house without it, capturing spontaneous, classified and often unseen stories in Black life throughout each day.
Davis harnesses an intimacy in his photos that can only be discerned from the nucleus of the culture, allowing him to offer a genuine sense of the breadth of Black Detroit, as well as in other places he has visited and documented.
Through his lens, the invisible are seen, heard, and celebrated; their tales, revealed.
Davis exhibited for the first time in 2021 and has since shown his work throughout the city, including at Riverside Detroit, Irwin House Gallery, ImageWorks in Dearborn, and the Detroit Historical Museum. Some of his recent assignments have included work for the Motown Museum and Rolling Out Magazine. Elonte Davis’ work is sought and collected for its raw honesty. He may be very well evolving into our current-day Gordon Parks.
Elonte’s latest exhibition, This is Where I’m At, and this is where I’m going, runs from July 26th to September 2 inside the Carr Center Gallery, 15 E. Kirby St. in Detroit.
The multi-media exhibition will launch with photographs of Detroit children engaged in ordinary, everyday moments at home and in the city’s neighborhoods and public spaces. Videos culled from the photographer’s experiences with his young subjects and their families will provide a soundscape and multi-layered experience of Black kinship, childhood, and family dynamics.
Organized by Detroit’s Irwin House Gallery with Steed Society Art and Rolling Out Magazine,this is a traveling exhibition that begins at home and hopes to expand and encompass youth in urban landscapes across the country – including but not limited to, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.