Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse combines the meticulous and sensitive drawings of artist Joel Daniel Phillips with powerful poems by distinguished writers, including lead poet, Quraysh Ali Lansana.

In 2019, while looking through old photographs, Phillips stumbled upon a 1936 image by Walker Evans. A gaping black hole in its center stopped Phillips in his tracks. Curiosity led him to more hole-punched negatives, all originating from the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a government agency that sent photographers across the U.S. to document widespread poverty during the Great Depression. Phillips showed them to poet Quraysh Ali Lansana and the two developed Killing the Negative, a project that fuses drawings inspired by these “killed” negatives with original poems written in response. The unique pairings take us to the intersection of representation, truth, and power.