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When his body was found, Emmett\u2019s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral. She hoped that the horrifying image of his grotesquely brutalized head might reach people the way words have not. \u201cA photograph was what would be required to transform witnessing in society,\u201d Lewis said\u2014and indeed, the funeral photos had a tremendous impact at the time when news outlets published them. \u201cFor me, there can be no more important question than asking, \u2018What does seeing the truth require today?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What galvanized her to launch this project was the resistance, even now, to acknowledging the details of Till\u2019s case. One example: a memorial placed at Graball Landing near Glendora, Mississippi, where Till\u2019s body was pulled from the river, has been the site of countless acts of vandalism<\/a>. A visit to the monument \u201cconstructed an urgency in me to do my part to honor Emmett Till’s life,\u201d says Lewis. But she was coming from a place beyond mourning and despair. \u201cHe\u2019s become a symbol,\u201d she says, \u201cbut we\u2019ve never given ourselves a means to envision his right to life.\u201d So Lewis sought to build one for him, using photos by artists in MoCP\u2019s permanent collection\u2014including ones by Annie Leibovitz<\/a>, Francesco Scavullo, Bruce Davidson, and about 110 others.<\/p>\n For months on end, Lewis would take a seat, set an intention, and scan through images until she lost focus. She went through 18,000 photographs, choosing images without considering the identity of each individual artist. She also invoked the departed: \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to say I really asked for guidance from Till and from Mamie Till-Mobley. I really asked for a sign of what was meant to represent his unlived life, and really, that\u2019s maybe for another kind of interview. But it shocked me how precise the feedback was.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr.<\/span>Lance Omar Thurman<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n