What Does Social Change Look Like? Filmmaker Jordan Shanks Wants to Show You

Published on Oct 22, 2020 at 3:15 PM

Francine Townes

Jordan Shanks was a 19-year-old film student at Howard University when Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man with his whole life ahead of him, was killed by a white police officer. In 2014, the world erupted in protest. Shanks went down to Ferguson, MO, to join in the relief efforts, he told POPSUGAR, and ended up marching with Brown's parents to the street where their son was fatally shot. The street, he said, was still wet with blood. "I will never forget the look on his mother's and father's faces. It's the kind of expression that takes you years to understand."

Judging by his latest film, narrated in part by the fantastic author-poet Sonya Renee Taylor, it's an understanding he wants others to share in. Shanks, 25, is now a fellow at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where his work as a filmmaker and photographer catalogs the ongoing struggle for racial justice and equity across the country. His two latest works are a documentary short called Never Again and a new photo collection titled "Love Letters to America: Part II", both of which capture protests and other moments of civil disobedience in Ferguson, New York, Baltimore, MD, and his hometown of Richmond, VA.

Ahead of the premiere of the virtual exhibition today (and celebrating the opening of the in-person exhibition in Richmond on Oct. 16 as moderated by New York Times bestselling author Kristen Green), we sat down with Shanks to discuss growing up in the shadow of the Confederacy (vis-à-vis Richmond's racist monuments), what social change looks like, and how his own experience in Ferguson catalyzed some of his latest work.

POPSUGAR: Tell me about the premise of Never Again.

Jordan Shanks: So, the documentary captures nationwide protests that have been happening over the past few years — particularly over the past year and this last summer — following the death of George Floyd, and also following Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and various others.

PS: Mmhm.

JS: It captures those protests, and also documents the tagging of Confederate monuments in Richmond, [VA,] which has been happening across our nation. But, what makes it so pivotal in Richmond is that it's the former capital of the Confederacy.

PS: I know you grew up in Richmond. I want to ask, what was it like to grow up with these monuments to white supremacy in plain sight, and then to see them come down?

JS: Powerful. Growing up here, you see those monuments and they're normalized to you. The figures they portray are taught to you in school as being positive people in history and important people in our state's history. What's been so enlightening over the last few months is seeing the number of Black and Brown people on Monument Avenue. I read in The Atlantic that more people have been to Monument Avenue in the last few months than in the entire history of Richmond, and it's so true. Because it just wasn't a place people went down to. It was just Monument Avenue mansions, monuments. And no one walks down that aisle: no one disrupts it. For me, it's kind of a cool moment, seeing how people are coming together, and it's become a hub for young people, and people of different races and identities to come to that didn't exist before in Richmond.

PS: Right. I think this film is a beautiful physical representation of what dismantling systems of oppression looks like. Because the truth is, there are monuments to white supremacy everywhere: like, in our laws, in the roots of policing itself. Most of it we just can't physically tag or topple. So, to have this film is very powerful.

JS: Thank you. I hope that this film can live on for future generations to see and look back and say, "This is what happened." This is the truth of what these times looked like from the vantage point of someone who's from Richmond, at the intersection of race and ethnicity.

PS: The debut of Never Again and your new photo collection "Love Letters to America: Part II" will take place on Oct. 16 at the Richmond Art Garage at a gallery exhibition called "Racial Awakening." What do you hope your new work awakens in attendees?

"When I finally understood the implications of our system of policing in America was marching with Mike Brown's family to the site of his murder."

JS: I hope it gives context. And I hope that it also lends to the healing and reconciliation I think we are going through as a country. And also, I hope it leads to progress. I mean, the collection, the photos are from my journey over the last several years, which began in Ferguson[, MO,] after Mike Brown's death.

A group of us from Howard went to Ferguson to aid in the relief efforts down there. I went to document those efforts. But really, what happened was, I began a journey I didn't think I'd be on. I remember when it changed for me. When I finally understood the implications of our system of policing in America was marching with Mike Brown's family to the site of his murder. And there were candles and posters for him laid out on the floor. And when we got there, I remember his blood was still on the ground, on the pavement.

PS: Wow.

"And I remember this older woman, she took my hand and she said, 'This is what they do to us.'"

JS: I will never forget the look on his mother's and father's faces. It's the kind of expression that takes you years to understand. And I remember this older woman, she took my hand and she said, "This is what they do to us."

For me, I grew up in Richmond Afro-Latino, and I grew up mainly in white neighborhoods. And, I think it was when I went to an HBCU that I really understood a lot of the history and the complexity. And really, that moment in Ferguson was game-changing for me: when I understood, finally, a layer of the Black experience that I previously had not been privy to.

The virtual exhibition "Love Letters to America: Part II" is now open to the public.