About the Film

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The Sound She Saw is a documentary feature length film featuring Black women photographers revealing the history and struggle of Black women in photography while showcasing and celebrating their work while asking the question: 

What happens when a Black woman photographer has agency, the control to reverse the gaze and see the world through her unique lens? 

The photographers featured in The Sound She Saw challenge the status quo by collectively redefining our narrative, image by image.

This film exquisitely weaves the stories and images of Black women photographers revealing and paying homage to Black women pioneers  and masters of photography by painting a colorful palette of 

multi-genre imagery experienced through our specific lens. 

The Sound She Saw is a diverse representation of Black women who have and are continuing to create images globally. 

In 1986 the photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, published the ground-breaking historical book, Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers that chronicled the work of Black women photographers dating back to 1866.  Today in 2024, 36 years after Viewfinders, photo book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora as well as new, innovative and ground breaking & ceiling breaking Black women photographers are looking through their particular lens - now exist, 

picking up where Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe left off. 

All the above serving as inspiration for The Sound She Saw.

During this precarious time in our history the social relevance and context of this film is extremely important. Having agency over one's image, visually controlling the narrative in a world soiled with extreme racism where a Black woman can lose her life just by sleeping in her own bed in her own home (Breonna Tayler) or where a Black woman can be killed by questioning and speaking up for herself when pulled over by police (Sandra Bland), where their images are manipulated to criminalize them on a constant media loop, makes 

The Sound She Saw timely, critical and urgent. 

The photographers featured in The Sound She Saw 

challenge the status quo by collectively and defiantly  

redefining our narrative, image by image.

Bronzelens Film Festival 2022

Nominated for "Best Documentary"

Urbanworld Film Festival

"Honorable Mention" for the Ally Creative Producer Award 

St. Louis International Film Festival

Reel Sisters Film Festival 

The Brooklyn Museum featured  a screening of 

The Sound She Saw  and talk back with me, one of my producers MTkalla Keaton, EBONY's Editor-in-Chief  & Senior Vice President of Programming, Marielle Bobo and the brilliant photographer, 

Renee Cox both  whom are highlighted in the  film ,

celebrating 'Legacy" , Brooklyn Museum's  First Saturday's theme 

for Black History Month 2023.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/calendar/view/2023/02/04

*  COMING  UP   NEXT *

Museum of the Africa Diaspora (MoAD ) 

a Smithsonian Affiliate in San Francisco, CA. June 22, 2023

https://www.moadsf.org/event/film-screening-discussion-the-sound-she-saw-with-director-crystal-whaley-and-artists-renee-cox-and-adreinne-waheed

Pérez Art Museum (PAMM) Miami Oct. 2023

The Portrait Gallery / Smithsonian / Feb. 15, 2024 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-sound-she-saw-film-screening-with-a-post-talk-tickets-796183796167

Newark Museum of Art / March 7, 2024

 https://newarkmuseumart.org/event/newark-black-film-festival-presents-the-

sound-she-saw/?date=202403071900

California African American Museum / March 28, 2024

MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

JUNE 22, 2023 / SAN FRANSICO, CA.

OCT 2023 / MIAMI, 

California African American Museum

March 28, 2024 / Los Angeles, Ca.