March's Letter
“My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” -Richard Avedon
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 updated letter as I fix all the many, many grammatical errors that seem to magically appear after I send the letter to your inbox.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Hello Again,
I’m writing to you from my rooftop in sunny Harlem. It’s chilly, I’m oscillating often between light jackets and thick coats, but today is a gorgeous day. The melodic sounds of a very active springtime in New York calm me. Children laugh and shout at the park directly across from my apartment. Feeling Myself by Beyonce and Nicki Minaj lilts in and out of focus from a distant car, no doubt double parked. My hair is freshly laid, I’m flipping through a few pages of Égoïste magazine and I’m picking at a fruit salad. I’m grateful for this beauty and the power of presence. In the same breath, I just found out that Marvin Mayfield, a community activist that I greatly admired and that I had the great pleasure of spending the day photographing last summer, has died. As I’m trying to enjoy the beauty of being in this moment, I can barely get through typing even a word of this because it’s all too awful and I’m trying to avoid a consistently elegiac tone in these letters.
Life is often exactly this, too many feelings to hold in either hand at any given moment. I feel it all, all the time and although it is difficult, I know that this makes me lucky. I’m sending so much love to Marvin and his family. His commitment to prison abolition and criminal justice reform left a lasting impact on me. He loved the images that we made together and very few things matter more to me than that. Earlier today at a demonstration in Albany, when it was announced that Marvin had died, protesters and members of CCA were able to print out 100 copies of my image of him and they wrote letters to his wife and family on the backs. A powerful gesture, one I’m still sitting with.
It feels as if I haven’t written to you in months. Sometimes my life encompasses so much that I can barely keep up with it myself. Since the last letter I have been very busy.
I won’t spend much time speaking about the Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors images. I’m completely worn out by any discourse around them. I hope to revisit the experience in a few months, in a different format. What I will say is that I wish many things surrounding the way that these images entered the world would have been different. I wish that the level of homophobia and projection onto these images would have had even a teaspoon of nuance. More broadly, I wish that photographers were more valued, supported, and respected. This situation made it clear to me that we are not. Lastly, I’ve struggled a great deal with the reality that for many, photographing A-List celebrities is equivalent to having made it. This is not my reality and it saddens me that my work, often made as a love letter to my people, is seemingly valued less than an image of a celebrity.
Thinking through this whole thing really overwhelmed me. It made me wish that I had more photography elders who supported my work in real ways. Elders that I could call with the complicated questions that require nuance and lived experience.
After Eddie Conway died (see the previous newsletter) I felt submerged by similar heavy feelings. I started to question how one continues on living a life of principal, a life devoted to improving the world, when the world seems hellbent on showing you how irrelevant you and your attempts are. This lead me to reach out to the elders that I do have, like Paul Coates.
Paul is a former Baltimore Black Panther and he was very close friends with Eddie. He is also the father of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Above all, Paul is a Black man who has dedicated his life to the struggle, to helping to liberate Black people through organizing, education, and the everyday quiet acts like making the time to speak with me.
I’m not often intimidated by people but I’m nearly always intimidated by Paul. It’s not just because he helped to create Ta-Nehisi Coates, but because he is so firm and self assured. Whenever I doubt myself, my talent, or my future in front of Paul he simply swats that feeling away by asserting, “we have to work against disempowering conversations in our lives. You have to say to yourself, ‘If this conversation gives me no power, it does me no good.’” When I told him about my anxieties around the contemporary moment in photography and how little people seem to care for images he urged, “people can still recognize beauty.”
Paul said so many affirming things about the power and value of my work. It saddens me how often I need such reassurances but I do. What I appreciated most about our time together was his insistence that I continue on seeking the wisdom of my elders. When Paul was younger, many of the people that would typically be considered his elders saw him as a peer. Although he doesn’t regret this fact, he knows now how pivotal it is that we seek out and nurture these relationships. And, as a bonus, he introduced me and my work to his dear friend, Haile Gerima, a fucking legend who was very kind to me.
Aside from these heavier moments, I’ve enjoyed a great deal of pleasure, gratitude, and more love than I know what to do with.
I went back home to visit with my beautiful family and as always they got on my last damn nerve. While searching the table at Greedy Reads, a very cute book store in Baltimore, I happened upon a copy of the newly released, Black Archives and low and behold, it had an image of my grandmother! In the photo she is seen luxuriating in a bubble bath while sipping from an enormous wine glass. ICONIC! I must have submitted this image years ago because I have no memory of it but now it belongs to history. What a magnificent thing. The book is amazing and I’m so happy for Renata, the founder of Black Archives.
My oldest friend, Terry came up from Baltimore to visit me. Although he was a bit garrulous, it was very special to have him stay with me through the weekend. He couldn’t stop telling me how proud he was of me, every chance that he got he’d gush. Very humbling.
I developed a million rolls of film, rode around listening to Mac DeMarco with my lil baby Joel, read a Joan Didion essay aloud to Rafa, sang myself hoarse with Malcolm, laughed myself hoarse with Elliott, cussed myself hoarse with Megan. I traveled to Saratoga Springs to surprise my love, Daesha and we spent the whole day laughing and asking strangers to take group photos of us (we made it to 10 people). I made a few new friends, caught up with some old ones, and thought deeply about why it is nearly impossible for me to create new relationship dynamics within established relationships.
I gave two, likely incoherent, talks. One talk took place at my old stomping grounds, IDEO.org and the other at the amazing Brotherhood Sister Sol, talking to the youfs. Both talks made it clear to me that speaking in front of people, especially about my work, is both a nightmare and a muscle I need to exercise in order to improve. So…book me… at your own risk? lol
Reading, Watching, & Listening…
Working on this newsletter has shown me that I consume an interminable amount of media. Somehow I still manage to get many things done but, damn.
I read through the catalog for Hilton Als’ exhibition, What She Means, that used visual art to explore Joan Didion’s life and her work. It was rousing and penetrative. I was, as always, impressed by Als. The catalog included a few uncollected nonfiction pieces by Didion. I was particularly taken by In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love. Her writing here is especially poignant. I can relate to the dichotomous relationship between feeling gratitude for where you are in your career, pressed against the internalized narrative of where your life should be outside of it. Very lithe and skillful. I also loved The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic. Powerful!
I’ve also been revisiting my obsession with Avedon after my sweet friend Luis Santana gifted me a copy of Égoïste magazine. After flipping through the issue, as I cannot yet read French, I ordered three additional issues. I’m a little obsessed. The advertisements, my God!
I finally got my hands on Luncheon issue 13. I reallllllly loved the interview with Nicole Wisniak the founder and editor of Égoïste (a total coincidence). I really loved the quote, “…taste is a dictatorship.” I appreciated her sentiments around a photographer’s personal work. I was obsessed with all of the Avedon stories. My favorite story was about a portrait that he’d made of Nicole and two friends, that Nicole didn’t like. Avedon told her, “One day, when I am gone, you will look at this picture and understand that I knew you were a strong woman.” A gorgeous sentiment.
Last note on Avedon, I purchased a new book of his work called, Relationships. Terrific. Something I’m constantly thinking about is the privilege of photographing someone over long periods of time. Committing to a person and their image in this way is one of my favorite things. There are so many friends, peers, and artists that I’ve been photographing annually for years, so this collection felt very special. I will say, since the book was curated from the works Avedon donated to The Center for Creative Photography at The University of Arizona, the relationships in the book felt… a little sparse. Beautiful nonetheless.
I really enjoyed reading Ralph Ellison, Photographer. I had no idea about Ellison’s relationship to photography, though I knew he was good friends with Gordan Parks. The book made me realize how much I wish I had a collaborator in thinking through project ideas like Parks and Ellison did. There was a time but no longer. Imagining the two of them storming Lenox Avenue with their long coats, three piece suits, Leicas, and Rolleis thrills me. Ralph Ellison also went to school with Paul Coates…. LEGENDS! The images were beautiful, boring at times, like a photographer too afraid to get close. Some of the landscape images had a Saul Leiter lyricism to them which I enjoyed. His strongest portraits were of his wife Fanny Ellison.
I’ve been spending a bit of time on social media this month, that’ll be over in the next couple of weeks, but I have been enjoying some tidbits. I loved this Twitter thread about photographer couples. I’ve been enjoying this Instagram page’s discourse around how much photographers are being paid and how much work they have to take on in order to survive. I felt this poem to my core and felt this woman’s words a little deeper.
I revisited this conversation with Joseph Rodriguez, legendary photojournalist. And I could not get over this powerful essay about time and heartbreak. “Together now, after so much time spent falling apart.” Jean Chen Ho is so gifted. I’ve been living in her words all month.
My substack-bestie
wrote a crucial and vulnerable piece for her Dispatches from Depression series. Difficult at times but mordant. Loved it so much, getting a tattoo of a quote from it. More on that another time. As always, my favs and have been offering boundless brilliance in their newsletters.One of my husbands, Rey made a beautiful playlist about longing that I enjoyed. I’ve been obsessed with all things Ravyn Lenae. I revived my obsession with Arima Ederra’s song Portals after hearing it at the end of Swarm.
Speaking of, I thought the show was great. It was tense and entertaining. Dominique Fishback was a phenom. I decided not to engage any think pieces because I want to enjoy things. Ellen Pompeo left Grey’s Anatomy after 19 seasons and so the fuck did I. I’ll peek in when she returns, but only then. Snowfall… is killing me. I won’t spoil it but last week’s episode, I cried into my pillow.
I’m loving Rain Dogs. Un-prisoned made me want to boycott Kerry Washington and her interracial obsessions. Your Honor was irritating in the beginning but had a big payoff in the end. Abbott Elementary remains the superior choice of television these days but Little America is also pretty amazing. Lots of tears, a little bit saccharine but that’s alright.
South Side getting canceled broke me. I’m noticing a trend happening right now, where networks are green lighting Black ass shows that are made for Black people, by Black people, and those shows are getting canceled, often in the show’s third season. South Side didn’t deserve this and it makes me sick but also, it didn’t stand a chance. I have many thoughts, feelings, and fears, but I digress.
This month has been packed. I’m exhausted but always, always grateful. Lots of travel coming up, light announcements, beautiful portraits, and selfies of a bad bitch in her prime. See you in April!
"--thought deeply about why it is nearly impossible for me to create new relationship dynamics within established relationships."
would love to hear more thoughts about this! you maintain so many beautiful relationships, I'm in awe of how you're able to see and be seen by so many folks!
"I decided not to engage any think pieces because I want to enjoy things." lmao! tattoo 4 me maybe. dunno how u do all u do with the grace u do it, but thank u x