You Mean The World To Me: The Real Stories In Our Family Photos

The Arts Council of Tuscaloosa will be hosting “You Mean the World to Me: The Real Stories in Our Family Photos” in The Arts Council Gallery at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. On display September 4–Oct 29, 2026, the exhibit is free and open to the public and will be featured on September 4 at 5 p.m. during First Friday.

The exhibit, curated by Dr. Zun Lee, explores identity, memory, family and belonging through photographs and stories contributed by community members in Tuscaloosa and across the South. The collection was developed during Lee’s one-year artist laureate residency in collaboration with Dr. Robin Boylorn and the Holle Center for Communication Arts.

Community members were asked to share family photographs and respond to the question: “What are the stories our family photos help us remember, and what do they say about us as individuals, as a community and as a society?” Featuring photographs from family albums accompanied by brief personal narratives, the project is inspired by Lee’s Fade Resistance, a collection of more than 4,000 orphaned Polaroids documenting Black family life in the 20th century. The exhibition also includes a quilted assemblage of photographs from Fade Resistance, which is housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

The exhibition is presented with support from The Arts Council of Tuscaloosa, the Canada Council for the Arts and Episode, LLC.