Fortune uplifts the long-enduring nature of Black culture and traditions in the American South across ten years of portraiture rooted in history and the landscape.

Flour, water, and salt. These are the sole ingredients that make Hardtack: a Civil War-era food long-associated with survivalism, land migration, and its extremely long shelf life. Drawing from this history as a metaphor for the long-enduring nature of Black culture and traditions, Hardtack uncovers the roots that tie Fortune's native landscape to the conflicts and nuances associated with the post-emancipation Americas.

In the follow-up to his breakout monograph I can't stand to see you cry, Fortune borrows from the language of vernacular and archival photography to interrogate the historical relationship of his community to photography; rooted in the landscape, Fortune often uses sites of historical and cultural interest as a guide but not a subject, implying the deep ties that bind modern Black communities resiliently to their regions, in the face of both adversity and joy.

A significant theme in Hardtack is Fortune’s striking portraits of coming-of-age traditions. Inside, young bull-riders, praise dancers, and pageant queens inherit and gracefully embrace these forms of community ritual. Fortune's dignifying eye pays tribute to these cultural performances' rigour, discipline and creative flair, alongside the intergenerational conversation between young people and elders handing down these traditions. Collecting together nearly a decade of work, Hardtack continues Fortune’s weaving of documentary and personal history, marking a sincere expression of love and passion to a region that has nourished the artist personally and creatively, while also marking an important contribution to photographing the American South.

• Rahim Fortune is a visual artist and educator from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. He uses photography to ask fundamental questions about American identity. Focusing on the narratives of individual families and communities, he explores shifting geographies of migration and resettlement and the way that these histories are written on the landscapes of Texas and the American South. Fortune’s previous book, I can’t stand to see you cry, was published by Loose Joints in 2021, and was the winner of the Rencontres d'Arles Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2022. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide and many permanent collections, including the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, LUMA Arles, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and The Boston Museum of Fine Art.

• Special Edition also available with choice of two silver gelatin prints
  
  

• Artist bundle also available: save 50% off I can't stand to see you cry when ordering together with Hardtack.

  
  
  
• 144 pages, 238 × 287 mm, 72 tritone plates
  Section-sewn clothbound debossed hardcover
  
  With a text by Imani Perry
  
  Edited by Sarah Chaplin Espenon at Loose Joints
  Designed & Published by Loose Joints
  
  LJ198, March 2024
  978-1-912719-55-6
  

• Signing at NY Art Book Fair, Saturday 27 April 3pm
  

• 
  
  

• New York launch, Dashwood Books, Friday 03 May 6–8pm
  
  

• Paris launch, Delpire & co, Weds 15 May 6–9pm
  
  

• Rahim Fortune talk at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson Paris, Thursday 16 May 7pm, Ticketed, followed by a book signing.
  
  

• Signing at Offprint London, Saturday 18 May
  
  
• Press:
• 1000 Words
• Creative Review
• Vanity Fair
• The Atlantic
• The Guardian
• Another Mag
• Texas Monthly
• The Observer
  
  
• Rahim Fortune in conversation with Nicole Fleetwood, ICP New York, Thursday 11 April 6.30–8pm. Ticketed, followed by a book signing.