Jonathan Calm ‘Hands on the Wheel: African American (Auto)mobility in Space, Time and Mind’

Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with Bay Area-based artist Jonathan Calm. The images in this exhibit represent Calm’s ongoing project of exploring African American (Auto)mobility based on his documentation of sites listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936-1966), the guidebook that referred travelers of color to safe and dignified accommodations during the final decades of the Jim Crow era. Calm’s perspective is both archival and imaginative, as he combines location and landscape photographs from across the country with carefully staged self-portraits, contextualized through historical reimagining.