“Mourn Black Murder”
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Object Details
Artist/Maker
Leah Jaynes Karp, American, born 1940
Date
1982
Medium
Dye coupler print on paper with ink
Dimensions
Please contact the Museum for more information
Credit
Gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
Accession #
1983.62.2
Description
Leah Jaynes Karp created this mixed-media series in response to the Atlanta Child Murders. Between 1979 and 1981, at least twenty-nine Black children, teens, and young adults—mostly boys—were kidnapped and murdered; a suspect was identified and apprehended in 1981. In Karp’s hauntingly delicate works, she pulls phrases and words from news articles covering the events and interweaves them with cutout photographs of lilies. The overall effect of the work is a poignant commemoration of the tragedy of many young lives senselessly lost.