What you should know about Time magazine’s haunting George Floyd cover

The June 15 issue of Time magazine, on newsstand Friday, features a painting by American artist Titus Kaphar that references the murder of George Floyd. In a note to readers, Time Creative Director D.W. Pine writes that, Kaphar’s 60″x60″ oil painting, titled Analogous Colors, features an African-American mother holding her child. To complete the work, Kaphar cut out the canvas to show a mother’s loss: Floyd called out to his deceased mother during the 8 minutes and 46 seconds he was pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer. “Mamma!” Floyd, 46, called out. “Mamma! I’m through.” Floyd’s mother, Larcenia Floyd, died May 30, 2018, nearly two years to the day that her son was killed. Keep reading here. In a separate post, Titus Kaphar offers a powerful, poetic meditation on the painting—and “what it means to be Black in America.” Please read it. An additional note about the cover, also from Pine’s post: For the first time, surrounding Kaphar’s painting, the red border of Time includes the names of people: 35 black men and women whose deaths, in many cases by police, were the result of systemic racism and helped fuel the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Their names are merely a fraction of the many more who have lost their lives because of the racist violence that has been part of this nation from its start. The names are Trayvon Martin, Yvette Smith, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Jerame Reid, Natasha McKenna, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, William Chapman, Sandra Bland, Darrius Stewart, Samuel DuBose, Janet Wilson, Calin Roquemore, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Joseph Mann, Terence Crutcher, Chad Robertson, Jordan Edwards, Aaron Bailey, Stephon Clark, Danny Ray Thomas, Antwon Rose, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson, Michael Dean, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

What you should know about Time magazine’s haunting George Floyd cover

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