CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/2/2022

Sandro Miller's 'Crowns: My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom' is NEW from Skira

Featured photograph, titled “Ipeleng,” is reproduced from Crowns: My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom, collecting 140 vivid color portraits of Black women with excellent, inspiring hair by Sandro Miller. “Yes, the crowns here are rambunctious,” Patricia Smith writes in her Introduction. “They are fierce, with tint both fiery and chill. If you gaze at them and then slam your eyes shut, they will still be there. The portraiture is so alive, so undeniably real, that you can almost reach out and plunge your hands into those glorious, uproarious naps. You can almost smell the heady combination of spiced oils shimmering in the coiled or braided strands. But it would be a mistake to believe that this work is that keenly focused, that it is simply a devoted homage to what is arguably the African-American woman’s most visible and controversial trait. This is a history book. This is a study of the myriad ways the Black woman struts through the world, the obstacles she confronts and shatters, the inevitable and indelible mark she leaves wherever she enters. This is not just an elegantly wrought look at the crowns the woman wears. This is the glorious story of the woman who wears them.”