Silver Eye

Anthony Francis exposes, redirects, and transforms foundational assumptions about photography, such as pose and gesture, to elevate individual agency and create potent spaces for imagination. Xavier Scott Marshall reimagines centuries of Christian iconography to create large-format black-and-white photographs that center Black experience and change perceptions of religious image-making.

Hear both artists discuss their work exhibited in Fellowship 24 and join an open discussion about dismantling art history and photography’s presumed authority.

Join the Zoom link below on 6/5 at 6pm EST

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84518648688?pwd=MKHIFxdPSwuO8hRgoHebk7TzQ1GWUv.1

Meeting ID: 845 1864 8688 Passcode: 307230

Image: Xavier Scott Marshall, Madonna and Child, Pittsburgh, 2021. Courtesy of the artist

Participating Artists

1. Anthony Francis is a multifaceted visual artist filmmaker, educator, and writer based in San Antonio, Texas. After receiving an English degree and going on to earn a M.Ed from The George Washington University, he studied at the Academy of Art University to gain an MFA with a concentration in photography. His work and research interests are concerned with opacity, love, and portraiture's politics connected to the photographic apparatus. He has spoken and shown work internationally and his work is in private and public collections. In 2024, he received a Fellowship award in Silver Eye's annual photography competition.

2. Xavier Scott Marshall is a first-generation Trinidadian-American artist. Xavier’s large format black and white images of decontextualized Christian icons, saints, and martyrs across various cities in the US and Europe reflect the colonial history of religious image-making to question and draw parallels between visual history and the black condition. His hand-processed film images bare the blemishes of the medium, with scratches and marks speaking to the honesty and fragility of his process and the subjects in his photographs. In 2024, he received a Keystone Award honorable mention in Silver Eye's annual photography competition. This was made in recognition of his outstanding work made in Pennsylvania.