The young black man wears a cream bomber jacket, and his arms are outstretched, like he’s carrying a great, invisible weight. His strong hands create a protected space, where a conch shell as big as his head floats at chest level. It’s an otherworldly image, less surrealist dreamscape and more a religious icon, the man’s natural hairstyle evoking a saint’s halo.
The Sound of Silence is a lithograph print first created in 1978 by Charles White, and remixed over and over. Sometimes the man’s jacket is blue or orange, sometimes the image is in black and white. In a later version the shell has been cut out of paper itself—a jagged hole below the man’s imploring expression. In another, the young man has been cut from the image, just his loose clothes and the floating shell remain.
