All Hands On Deck #5

This is one of seven lithographic prints in Damon Davis’s "All Hands on Deck" portfolio: each image presents a different pair of hands held up high. The hands belong to individuals who were involved in the Ferguson, Missouri, protest movement that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in August 2014. “Hands up, don’t shoot” was a phrase that echoed throughout the protests, but in Davis’s images that gesture of surrender becomes one of resistance, fortitude, and community. According to Davis: “I tell stories that speak to the human experience. The hands you see are images I have captured of people who have shaped and upheld this movement. The people’s movement. It is our right—to be seen, to be heard…to be validated. It is our collective responsibility.”   Davis, an artist who describes his work as “part therapy, part social commentary,” was actively involved in the Ferguson protests himself and originally pasted photographs onto boarded-up storefronts along West Florissant Avenue. He also made the digital image files available on the internet so that anyone anywhere could download them and do the same. In 2015, this fine-art portfolio of lithographs, made from the photographs, was published by Wildwood Press, bringing the work and its message to a new audience.