Crown Hill Neighborhood 2

When designing this box, the artist considered what “community” means to the largely Black Crown Hill neighborhood.  He opted to use photographs of residents acting communally:  picking up litter, enjoying each other socially, attending meetings to decide as a group what happens in their neighborhood.  The result is a vivid portrait of the people and activities that makes a place a neighborhood, and just might turn people’s thinking around who believe that “nothing happens” in Crown Hill.

William Rasdell is a photographer and graphic artist based in Indianapolis. His images examine the ways that ethnic convergence can enrich cultures with foods, religions, languages and the arts, and he focuses on the impact of the African presence throughout the diaspora seeking to understand how these cultural relationships have evolved into contemporary societies. In addition to working in Black neighborhoods in his hometown, he has created pictorials that bear witness to the path of influence and retention in daily life and custom in Uganda, Israel, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad/Tobago and across the United States.