Austin Bryant

Published with MONOLITH EDITIONS.

Martha’s Vineyard may now be known as a preppy East Coast getaway destination, but behind this glossy sheen of traditional tourism lies the seldom-told history of the Black and Wampanoag communities that have inhabited the island for centuries. These two groups have had their histories entwined as they have endured generations of oppression and displacement, both on Martha’s Vineyard (Noepe) and across the United States. “I have visited the island since I was a child,” says photographer Austin Bryant (born 1987), “where I have long found comfort in seeing interracial and Black families like mine.” Through portraits of the descendants of the Black and Indigenous communities still living on Martha’s Vineyard, together with archival photographs and texts, Bryant “aim[s] to evoke the countless lives and stories lost to time and systemic erasure.”