April's Letter

"What is remembering other than revitalizing a corpse that will return to its grave?" -Anthony Veasna So

Mikey in his Car, Baltimore, MD 2020

Please consider reading this letter on Substack’s site by clicking the banner or the title of the letter. It’s the only way to view the most up to date version as I fix all the many, many grammatical errors that seem to magically appear after I send the letter to your inbox.

4.25.23

Hello there,

I’m starting this month’s letter at Balcony Coffee, my favorite coffee shop in Los Angeles, tucked quietly inside a random shopping center in Koreatown. It’s strange the way that I cling to places and how much feeling creates and dictates the pulse of my life. I came to this café my very first time coming to LA alone because it was right around the corner from a friend’s apartment where I was staying. I was scared but anxious to rewrite my experience of Los Angeles on my own terms. I ordered an iced rose latte from a handsome young Japanese man named Jason and from that point on, I returned every day of that trip and the next trip and the next, and so, here I am again. I always order the same thing and every time I sip my iced rose, it makes me feel settled, like, after all of the travel and difficulty to get here, I’m here. I can relax. I can be still.

April has been a quietly challenging month but one of great reflection. I’ve been reckoning with a lot of complex decisions around my life, my work, and my future. I’m experiencing a very serious bout of burnout around working as a photographer in this consistently shifting creative landscape. I’m tired of trying to develop tools that hasten my oppression, that allow me to withstand abuses, petulance, and malformed egos. I’ve exhausted myself worrying about the ways that small people might try to traduce me, and wondering how everything became so difficult, so disingenuous.

Purav, Harlem, NY 2019

A few months back Elliott offered me a stirring and edifying bit of language (as he often does) to sum up my situation. He said, “You need to rescue the thing that you love from your need to survive.” Photography has been and continues to be the great love of my life, but molding it into my career, the sole thing responsible for funding that life, has complicated my relationship to it. So, I’ve been sitting with all of this, holding gratitude and exhaustion quite tightly in my hands.

At the start of this month, during a point of particular overwhelm, I traveled back to Saratoga Springs. I needed a break. I rented a lovely house on the lake (all by myself) and spent a week enjoying the most exquisite peace. Though while I was there, I saw no shortage of friends, some even coming up from the city, I made sure to prioritize silence. I didn’t open my computer to do an ounce of work. I didn’t update my daily itinerary or reply to any emails. I stared out at the lake all day, read until I dozed off, ate wonderful meals with friends, and watched television on the couch. It was perfect and restorative in the small ways.

At the Lake, Saratoga Springs, NY 2023

A few nights ago, while having dinner around a fire pit at Conrad Hotel in LA with my dear friend Luis, we started talking about trajectories in our respective industries and the difficulty of navigating relationships. I was reminded of a video that artist Texas Isaiah sent me when I first moved to NY. I was expressing a great sadness around not having found creative community, in particular, community within the popular set of straight, Black male photographers who were highly visible at the time. It’s so strange to think about that now because I really could not give a shit, but at the time I was heartsick; it felt like they simply refused to see my work and more importantly, to see me. In the video, Ava Duvernay is giving the 2013 Film Independent Forum Keynote Address. At the time, she was only three years into her career. Around the 7:20 mark of the video, she speaks about stepping into her identity as a filmmaker in 2010, after she “took off her desperation.” She spoke about wearing her desperation like a smelly coat, one that followed her into every room and was draped over everything she did or said. I remember, initially, being a bit offended by Texas Isaiah suggesting this video to me. I didn’t read my actions as desperate. In fact, I didn’t even view desperation as a personality trait I was in possession of, but as Ava unpacked it, it clicked. I needed to build a community of lateral peers, not folks at aspirational peaks in their careers. I needed to start from a more organic place and utilize what I had right in front of me. Most valuably, I needed to work on my confidence, to understand that I brought value to everything I did, whether people in power embraced me or not.

Artist Oscar Rene Cornejo, Skowhegan, ME 2018

That video was my bible during my first few years in New York, yet somehow I’d forgotten it and some of its lessons too. And there, on that dark and glowing rooftop, I was reminded of a younger me, a hungrier, sadder me. A me who was so eager to be seen, so eager to find community. I felt awash in affirmation thinking about how far I’ve come. I am so grateful to have built such a vibrant community and to have made community for myself all over the world. I don’t even have language for how grateful I am for the career that I’ve built for myself and the experiences that I’ve been able to have. But I also felt a bit sad to be feeling the low vibrational hum of burnout inside my chest in the sweep of these sweeter feelings.

I’m going to be doing some reevaluating, re-imagining, and revisiting over the next few months. I’ll still be considering jobs and shooting the things that I find most interesting, but I have to go slow and be quiet. I must prioritize my humanity and self-respect and spend time thinking about where I want to be in the coming years, the kinds of things I want to be working on. Of course, I’ll be using this space to parse through some of that.

Reading, Watching, & Listening…

Girl on the phone, Albany, NY 2022

One surprise benefit of writing this letter to you each month is that I’ve been able to sculpt a map of appreciations. To sift through my eclectic interests and to consider what is influencing and inspiring me and how.

I’ve been making my way through 2022 ‘s Best American Essays, edited by the homie, Alexander Chee. Alex is a constant inspiration for me; his writing is transformative and human. He strings together sentences of depth, heart, brutal honesty, and intellect with a dizzying ease. Here, he’s edited such a bountiful collection of essays. I was moved by his introduction for the book. I loved the language of “caring scholarship” in reference to writers tending to the work of their dead peers. I also loved the quote, “Writing can be a complicated game of giving up and coming back.” My favorite essays in the book so far have been Anthony Veasna So’s soul crushing, Baby Yeah, and Justin Torres’s It Had to Be Gold. I read Baby Yeah all alone, on a red wooden bench, in an empty amphitheater in Inglewood; the grunting and celebratory sounds of a group of Black men playing tennis on the other side of the fence helped to drown out the sound of my sobs as I reached the end of the essay. We lost something special in Anthony.

At the lake house I read and re-read Napoli, Napoli, Napoli, a work of true photographic excellence by photographer Brett Lloyd. This is the kind of book that I want to make, something weighty, significant, and beautiful. The b/w’s are no joke. I’ve been enjoying Vince Aletti a lot lately. I read his book Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines at the lake house and his book the Drawer at ICP after Elliott and I saw the current exhibition, Face to Face, which was wonderful. I’m appreciating Aletti more than ever as an archivist and historian.

I read this profile of Mark Bradford and I really enjoyed it. I was a bit irritated by his naming his piece, “Death Drop.” For the girls who’ve actually spent time in the ballroom scene, we know that the move is called “a dip.” The only folks who call a dip a death drop are white people and outsiders to this important sub-cultural space. Aside from that, I really enjoyed reading about Bradford’s upbringing and his recent desire to take a more autobiographical approach to the work. Excellent profile!

I loved this unique interactive story by the Times, Elegy for An Altered Planet. I was a bit sad that I had never heard of photographer Patric McCoy before now, but I’ve been excited to dive into his work. I especially enjoyed this interview. He seems like such a sweet man.

I was devastated by this story about Ralph Yarl, this story about “M.S.,” and absolutely gutted by news of the death of Koko Da Doll.

A Sunset, Malibu, CA 2021

After revisiting the original Ava Duvernay clip I watched this conversation between her and Issa Rae that I literally couldn’t get enough of. I will always be impressed by Issa and her propensity to create space around her ideas and interests. This is something I’ve yet to do in the real, physical world, but I hope to change that one of these days. Though, I am an extreme introvert with some misanthropic tendencies thrown in for bad measure, so maybe… not?

I thought the documentary, Turn Every Page, was brilliant. That level of craft, intentionality, and genius makes my mouth water. I aspire. Terrific film!

I finally watched the series finale of Snowfall. I won’t ever get over it. I cried like a fucking baby. Bravo to all involved in creating something so truthful with so much depth. I imagine John Singleton would be so proud.

I finally started watching Schmigadoon!. I cannot believe I was so late. Now, as an old-fashioned homosexual, I can’t imagine being happier with a show. Not since Glee has a show spoken directly to the Broadway Queen inside of me. The songs, the lyrics, the fucking choreography, the cast, everything is stellar. This is what’s been missing from television. I am so grateful. And DO NOT get me started on the soundtrack (sings, “We’ve Got Strife and Tribulation”).

My fatalism grew stronger after watching Extrapolations. It’s a very good but very bleak show. The Meryl Streep episode, that very last line. Whew!!!

I’ve been being pummeled within an inch of my emotional life by the new Feist album, Multitudes. Transcendent. I love very few artists the way I do Feist. She’s high on my dream list of people to photograph. This new album is so unique, so different from the rest of her oeuvre. I loved watching this interview with her. My favorite song on the album is Become The Earth. It’s shattering and the stacking at the end is mind numbing (this is usually a bad thing, meaning “bored.”. My second favorite is Forever Before. “Another day to be alone in, another lake to throw a stone in.” UGH!!!! She also sent out a deliriously gorgeous newsletter from her Substack. The opening sentence, “Let’s pretend this bouquet is made of three years…” knocked me out.

My boy Jesse put me on to Lake Street Dive’s, Bad Self Portraits, so I’ve been being ripped apart by them as well.

I’ve been listening to far fewer podcasts over the past month or two, not sure what’s going on there. I enjoyed Talk Easy’s episodes featuring Michelle Williams, Jenny Odell and Min Jin Lee. I was incredibly moved by the On Being episode featuring Vivek Murthy where he speaks about loneliness. As a person who suffers from deep loneliness, I felt attacked and seen when Vivek said, “Loneliness is a signal our body sends us when we’re missing something we need for survival.”

That feeling like something integral is missing is one I know too well and one I’m currently reconciling with. There are no quick fixes on the horizon, just the agonizingly slow process of self-discovery and healing. Thankfully, I’m committed. I’m committed to seeing and hearing myself and to the slowness.

Self Portrait in Hackney (sans neck brace), LDN UK, 2021