Walk into “Rejoice, Resist, and Rest: Images of Black Liberation from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive” at Atlanta Contemporary and it quickly becomes clear that this is not an exhibition about nostalgia. It is about connection between generations, between students and history, and between a legendary visual archive and the present moment.
On view through May 17, “Rejoice, Resist, and Rest” brings together archival photographs from the renowned Johnson Publishing Company collection, contemporary art pieces, texts, and zines created by students in the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and the Spelman Photography Program. The exhibition is supported by a Getty Research Institute initiative that has opened one of the most significant repositories of 20th-century Black American visual culture to scholarship and interpretation.
Bringing the Johnson Publishing Archive alive
Participating students were invited not only to study images from Ebony and Jet, but to interrogate what archives are, who builds them, and how images shape memory.
“We narrowed our notion of what an archive is, considering our phones as the archives closest to us,” said Nydia Blas, assistant professor of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College and co-curator of the exhibition. Students also examined their family archives and reflected on how photographs shape perceptions through framing.
“These people are so often performing or putting on for the public, … The photographs in the archive are a lot more intimate.”
Spelman Photography student tia campbell
Some students approached the archive as curators, assembling thematic groupings of photographs accompanied by original exhibition texts and research. Others responded as artists, creating new works—photographs, collages, and installations. Zines produced by the students are displayed alongside the work, underscoring the project’s commitment to accessible knowledge-sharing. “It is important to consider the ways that we can disseminate information that we deem important and be able to disseminate that information to other people, at a low cost,” Blas said. “That is a powerful exchange of knowledge.”
From a student’s POV
For Tai Campbell, a graduating Spelman senior and photography student, the archive offered an unexpected point of connection. One image in particular stayed with them: a portrait of Olympic decathlete Milt Campbell. “He’s looking directly at the camera with knitted eyebrows. His gaze is disarming,” Tai said. “He was a world-class athlete, yet in this photograph there’s no sign of that. It’s deeply human.”
Among the exhibition’s three guiding concepts, “resist” resonated most strongly for Campbell
“Resistance is the most powerful tool oppressed people have against their oppressor,” she said. Her contribution to the exhibition examines consumption—social media, news, and education—and the necessity of critical thinking. “Those in power don’t want the masses to question what they are being fed, so critical thought is an integral part of resistance.”
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Working with archival photographs also reshaped how Campbell thinks about storytelling. Many of the images, originally published as editorial features, depict famous figures—from Nina Simone to Magic Johnson—in domestic or intimate settings. “These people are so often performing or putting on for the public,” Campbell said. “The photographs in the archive are a lot more intimate.” The experience, she noted, revealed how environment and context can fundamentally change a narrative.
The blueprint for what’s next
That intimacy—and the responsibility it carries—threads through the exhibition as a whole. For Blas, the project’s power lies in what it models for young artists and scholars. Students were not simply selecting images they liked; they were creating arguments, shaping narratives, and asserting their authority as makers of meaning. “They shaped a new vision,” she said. “Through looking, research, and with authority. To say, my ways of seeing and thinking are so important they are on a wall, and in a zine that you can walk away with.”
In “Rejoice, Resist, and Rest,” the Johnson Publishing Company Archive does more than document history. It becomes a mirror, one reflecting the past while making space for students to imagine, critique, and build what comes next.