Aretta L. Baldon arrived in Atlanta in 1991 from Springfield, Illinois, with a camera—a gift from her father—ready to attend Spelman College. Thirty years later, she has become a visual storyteller whose exhibition "Forever I Love Atlanta: Westside Story" fills the walls at 960 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. NW with a narrative the neighborhood rarely gets to tell about itself.
"The Westside is often described through statistics, development plans, or headlines," Baldon writes in her artist statement. "This exhibition tells a different story."
Baldon's exhibition rests on a philosophy about the neighborhood: that a person born on the Westside can move through their entire education and professional life—from Atlanta Public Schools to Spelman, Clark Atlanta, Morris Brown or Morehouse, then to graduate programs at the Interdenominational Theological Center or Morehouse School of Medicine—without leaving a one-mile radius. Crucially, they can return.
Two striking pieces use reclaimed materials. "Sankofa: Iron Sharpens Iron" is framed in an iron window grate salvaged from a demolished English Avenue house. The photographs within—fathers and sons, coaches and athletes, mentors and students—are held by an object that once protected a home that no longer exists. Its companion piece, "Held," uses a window recovered from a torn-down Hollowell Parkway apartment complex to frame images of women supporting one another.
Baldon found the Sankofa mural that inspired the series on Sunset Avenue, stopped by a mockingbird's song. She turned and saw work by community elder Tillman Ward, someone who, she says, "has held my feet to the fire" during her years on the Atlanta school board.
One widely recognized image came when Baldon was on a dog walk near a MARTA station. She noticed a young man pacing and gesturing and initially worried he was in distress. Then she saw what he was holding: a library book by Carter G. Woodson. He was in conversation with ideas.
"What changed in that moment wasn't him," the wall text reads. "It was me."
The neighborhood is visibly shifting, and Baldon's documentation is unflinching. "Pathways" traces the Beltline from its unpaved days to its current form, following a neighborhood she jokes "officially flipped" once strollers started appearing alongside longtime residents.
The exhibition's emotional center rests on young people, particularly C.J. Stewart, founder of the LEAD Center for Youth. Stewart's portrait, "Breaking Barriers," shows him in a "Mayor of Bankhead" T-shirt against a Grove Park mural.
Stewart was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and played in their organization before having what Baldon describes as an epiphany: Why plant seeds in someone else's garden when the Westside held such possibility? He returned to Atlanta and founded LEAD, based at Washington High School, which uses baseball and tennis to reach young people through what the organization frames as the three curveballs of life: crime, racism and poverty.
The program runs an ambassador track for older students, a junior ambassadors group and a "rookie league" for younger kids. Stewart represents something statistically rare: he's among roughly 4 percent of Atlantans born into poverty who make it out. On his 50th birthday, he moved back into the Bankhead community.
Baldon serves on LEAD's advisory council. Her work—both visual and civic—reflects a belief that what we photograph matters, and how we show up for the people around us matters equally. She also supported a 2020 student-led protest at Atlanta Public Schools following the deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks.
When asked what the exhibition adds up to, Baldon answered without hesitation: "It's the past, the present, and the future."
The exhibition runs through July 11.
