Dan Stahl

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Hilton Als |Dan Stahl |Jane Bua |Vince Aletti

I met Alva Rogers years ago, through a mutual friend, and her various incarnations—actress, singer, artistic director, writer, puppeteer—have always been remarkable to me. As a young woman, Rogers posed for the artist Lorna Simpson, and is the subject of Simpson’s photograph-based piece “Waterbearer” (1986), along with other early works, and, of course, she was the nominal star of Julie Dash’s film “Daughters of the Dust” (1991), a fascinating evocation of Gullah culture in South Carolina.