“Honesty makes a good portrait – that moment where they’re confident in themselves, when there’s trust involved. Creating an environment that is relaxed and that has nuances of love creates a great portrait”

“I used to love to go through the family albums as a kid,” he says. “I’m the youngest in my family, so a lot of my relatives had passed away, but to have a way of knowing who they were, of knowing their style, their smile, their eyes, understanding why they were placed in that part of the book, it was all super important to me. My grandmother used to always sit on the front porch too, and go through the family album and offer oral history, which I thought was amazing.

“But I feel like it’s the same for me, that the way I look at Pharrell is the same way I look at my great-uncle in a photo,” he adds. “Not knowing him, but hearing stories about him and being excited about it, especially because the people that I photograph have all inspired me in one way or another.”

Carter’s father was in the air force and was involved in the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers, “able to express himself in the Black is Beautiful movement”, says Carter. Maybe he passed on a sense that everyone has something special because that is what Carter reaches for in his shoots. As his friend and collaborator Tracee Ellis Ross puts it in the introduction to What’s My Name: “He creates a space that is less of a set and more of an exchange; kind of like hanging with a friend in their backyard on a sunny day in that peace that comes after all the food has been eaten, the catching up is finished, and you are just there together without an agenda. This is what he captures – the safety of connection, the beauty of being.”

“You’re just able to be your full self, and not feel ashamed of being a little weird or a little different,” says Carter. “Embracing that is really beautiful. That’s the best, and the most original. If you’re trying to emulate someone else it can feel a little forced. Honesty makes a good portrait – that moment where they’re confident in themselves, when there’s trust involved. Creating an environment that is relaxed and that has nuances of love creates a great portrait.”

Carter’s father died in 2021 and the photographer responded with his first solo show, American Black Beauty, at SN37 Gallery New York, in which he also mixed his own photographs of relatives, family photographs, and professional work. With his book, Carter is keen to continue this trajectory, working on self-assigned projects alongside commissions. He is drawn towards photographing his nieces, he says, towards the feeling of doing the shoot as much as the images.

“I often don’t share the images, it’s my family and I’m protective over them,” he says. “But to see my nieces laugh and smile – to be a little nervous but then, at the end of the session, feel good about themselves because they’re like ‘Wow, I actually am valued’ – I gravitate towards it. But it’s not just from them. It’s honestly everyone that I love to photograph.”

Micaiah Carter: What’s My Name is out now (Prestel Publishing)

“You look out the window, you see the big mountains, and then on the wall in the living room there will be paintings of the same thing”

Gjestvang’s stories often relate, in some way, to her gender – but by 2014, she was ready to try something new. “I wanted to turn the camera towards men in some way, but I didn’t know how,” the photographer explains from her Oslo home. “Then I heard that there was a lack of women in the Faroe Islands.” Accustomed to the gender equality of Nordic countries – Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden have all reduced their economies’ gender gaps by between 80 and 90 per cent – the photographer was both surprised and intrigued by this apparent disparity.

“I tried to be very open,” she says of her earliest visits to the Faroe Islands. “It’s not interesting to go somewhere and just confirm your own expectations.” During this time, the photographer drove aimlessly across the sprawling, empty landscapes without appointments or plans. Over time, she began to decipher the habits of the Faroese people. Many men, for instance, meet daily at the islands’ harbours, both to work and to socialise. Gradually, she was able to gain their trust.

Named in reference to a 15-year-old article by Firouz Gaini, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of the Faroe Islands, the pictures in Atlantic Cowboy reflect this trust. Portraits of men at work and play offer an insight into masculinity in constant flux. Younger generations grapple with their inability to form the traditional family units once so valued by their parents and grandparents. Meanwhile, older men attempt to adjust to a society in which the values on which their forefathers’ identities have been built – strength, courage, Christian morality and dedication to fishing which characterise the ‘Atlantic Cowboy’ – are increasingly pushed to the fringes.

“What I found both unique and touching is that when lacking their own little tribes, they seek other forms of companionships,” Gjestvang recalls of her time among Faroese men. In particular she remembers two brothers, 68-year-old Klæmint and 65-year-old Nicodemus, who, both unmarried, live together in their childhood home. Each day Klæmint goes to work as a fisherman while Nicodemus remains at home. When the younger man sees his brother’s boat returning to the harbour, he begins to cook their dinner: potatoes, whale meat and whale blubber, accompanied by a glass of milk.

This less traditional, though clearly dedicated, kind of familial relationship is mirrored many times in Atlantic Cowboy. Here, notes on Gjestvang’s subjects show how the dynamics of the Faroe Islands’ large, close knit families have been disrupted by women unsatisfied with the offerings of island life, and by men unwilling – or unable – to change. “You look out the window, you see the big mountains, and then on the wall in the living room there will be paintings of the same thing,” the photographer says of the homes of these Faroese men. “It’s almost like they are married to the landscape.”

Atlantic Cowboy by Andrea Gjestvang is out now (GOST)

Muay Thai enthusiast Aneesa Dawoojee wanted to challenge stereotypes about fighters. Photographing at her local gym, she discovered a mixed cast with their own stories to tell

Minutes away from the centre of Croydon – a town in the south London borough of the same name – lies the SN Combat Academy, a martial arts school run by coach Sam Nankani. Amateur and professional kickboxers from varying backgrounds gather here to train in Muay Thai. Nicknamed the ‘art of eight limbs’, the full-combat sport focuses on kicking, punching and clinching techniques to strike an opponent for points. The practice requires an unbridled commitment to its intense, discipline-led training. It is here, between the centre’s sweaty walls and boxing rings, that Aneesa Dawoojee began to create her latest series, The Fighting Spirit of South London.

Taken over the past few years, starting in 2019 – during what Dawoojee describes as the period “pre- and post-George Floyd” – and moving on to other locations, the style of the series sits somewhere between portrait and documentary. Each velvety image offers a glimpse into the life of its subject. It mostly frames a Muay Thai fighter from the waist up in a different pose; hands in soft prayer, fingers clasping a necklace or arms loosely crossed. “I have such an interest in documentary work and that’s where the crossover is,” Dawoojee explains. “I feel that there’s a history in all of us.”

Dawoojee hopes to illustrate the many faces of the martial art, from hijab-wearing women to heavily tattooed, muscular men. The series includes 21-year-old award-winning fighter Shanelle, pictured with an uncompromising look set into her features, cradling a photo of her late best friend. South London-based personal trainer Louis [page 132] gazes into the distance in an image that pays tribute to his mother, who ran professionally for Great Britain. “Each portrait is about an individual. They can be of any race, colour, size, age, but what I’ve tried to do with this series is connect each one in some way,” says the Mauritian-Trinidadian photographer.

Dawoojee has been practising Muay Thai since her teens, and for 13 years worked with children and teenagers with mental health challenges. In the hope of finding diverse subjects for her photographic work, she began to shoot fights at the local gym centre, where her son would train. From the outset, she wanted the work to be used to educate – a social commentary on the unseen lives of Muay Thai fighters in London. Muay Thai not only preaches consistency and commitment, but also empowers and instils confidence, especially in young people. “It teaches discipline and the appropriate way of looking after and defending yourself safely, which a young child is not going to learn in the classroom,” she explains. “Equally, it’s such an empowering thing for young girls to be doing.”

It was important that these qualities were reflected in the series. “I needed to make sure that [the subjects] were the right kind of advocates if I am to use the work as an educational tool to support young people,” she explains. “The stories have to be ones that can resonate with people.” She cites Reon Wong [page 132] as an example of such an advocate. Now a professional fighter, Wong spent his teenage life unable to break a cycle of “darkness and negativity” before being introduced to Muay Thai. In his portrait, Wong stands proudly confronting the camera; a stance that highlights his confidence and commitment to the art form.

Dawoojee’s photographic process was a lengthy one. She spent time getting to know her subjects and each of their stories. “Building a relationship is slow and it takes time,” she says. “I need to trust them too: I’m not taking advantage of anyone’s story so there was a lot of discussion.” This slowness provided Dawoojee with the opportunity to capture the private moments, quiet determination and honest gestures of fighters. Her patient approach also echoes a question that lies at the heart of her work: how can we capture vulnerability without encroaching on a sitter’s personal boundaries?

The series is mainly shot in black-and-white: an attempt to represent the individuals in the simplest way possible. Every sitter was asked whether they would feel comfortable wearing a T-shirt or having their skin exposed. “I believe the human body will tell you so much more than the face; the body tells you a thousand things,” she says. “Going from black to white means the focus is on their humanity.” This is also the reason why the series is photographed in the style of traditional portraiture in the locker room, away from the bustle of the fighting ring to achieve that “quietness”. “The storytelling part is private – you can’t have an audience listening in,” she explains.

The Fighting Spirit of South London serves as an antidote to the traditional ‘fighter’ stereotype, which Dawoojee believes is often reduced to caricatures in Western media. Instead, it offers a more accurate portrayal of the “small voices” within the sport. “People just assume that because they’re in the ‘fighting’ world, they’re aggressive and that they might not necessarily have much to contribute to the community,” Dawoojee explains over a video call from her home in south London. “But I feel it’s the total opposite.”

The resulting images are profound in their intimacy and invite intense speculation. Perhaps one of the most arresting is The Humble Warrior [page 136], a fighter ready for combat but happy to remain seated and resolute in his own body. Also featured is Grenfell firefighter Ricky Nuttall [page 135], a defiant portrayal that captures the emotional grey zone between resilience and defeat. Dawoojee’s search for authenticity allows her to showcase the breadth of Muay Thai fighting life. With a chronicler’s eye, she captures the many facets of this little-explored community and sheds light on the complex emotions that come with taking part in the discipline.

aneesadawoojee.com

All images © Kalpesh Lathigra.

Turning his polaroid studio express camera on a wide range of subjects, Lathigra interrogates universal themes that underpin photography and society

Stashed in a drawer or tucked into the back of one’s wallet is the most ubiquitous portrait of all – the passport photograph. In the UK, a small-sized photo is required for a driving licence, a passport, age identification to buy alcohol, to open a bank account or to go to school. While its primary function is to confirm one’s identity according to a tight set of binary categories, the most pertinent questions surrounding the image are not about the individual in the photograph but the very portrait itself. What is the relationship between identification photography and the right to freedom? How do these portraits cultivate concepts of nation, belonging and access? How do they define who we are and how we live?

Kalpesh Lathigra has been meditating on these questions for the last decade in a body of work called A Democratic Portrait – an interrogation of ”the one photograph that we all have“. The series contains over 50 passport photographs of cultural figures, politicians, refugees and individuals from marginalised communities, as well as the London-based artist’s friends, family and peers. For Lathigra, the project is about presenting an egalitarian vision of humanity, while confronting ideas around visual literacy and how images are used to assert value and hierarchy. And yet, the project continues to unravel into a broader study of portraiture, power and the changing dynamics of photography itself.

An assignment in 2013 from the United Nations to document the Za’atari, a refugee camp in Jordan taking care of Syrians, was the experience that sparked the beginning of A Democratic Portrait. “I’d always been working with NGOs,” says Lathigra, who was a photojournalist at the time. ”Back then, I was beginning to question how I take pictures, what images of refugees mean, and how they are used and read. Documenting hard news was my job, but I had no control over the usage, and it was an issue for me that images could be used as propaganda. As photographers, our subjectivity is critical and realising this eventually pulled me away from photojournalism.“

Lathigra returned to Za’atari multiple times taking a Polaroid Studio Express – a simple four-lens camera used to take UK passport photos. He began making portraits of refugees in an attempt to expose the privilege and inequalities deeply ingrained in photo IDs – highlighting how human rights and freedom of movement are intrinsically tied to race and country of origin. While Lathigra’s primary line of inquiry was rooted in the politics of the state, the project marked the beginning of a transition in his practice from classic photojournalism to contemporary documentary. As his intentions shifted, new approaches emerged. In A Democratic Portrait, the camera becomes an access point, while the photograph unlocks the sociopolitical implications of our relationship to the medium as individuals and society.

Around this time, Lathigra pivoted into portraiture. When he worked on editorial assignments, he was intent on making more of the commissions and began taking the passport camera with him. At the end of every shoot, he reserved a little time to make a photo of willing sitters. ”Photojournalism was changing,” he says. “Magazines no longer had the budget to send photographers away for months at a time to make an in-depth photo essay. Pivoting to portraiture was about survival.” He adds: “I wanted to offer my clients something different, but I also realised taking a great portrait of someone was not enough for me. I became an artist because I wanted to impact [social] change in one way or another. As a photojournalist, I had this rose-tinted view of changing the world – but it didn’t happen like that. These ideas about the portrait and its role in society matter. For me, if the audience is asking questions, then I’m doing my job.“

The first celebrity Lathigra made a passport photo of was Joan Collins [top]. She agreed as long as she could have time to prepare. With her smoky eyes, red lips, bare décolletage and soft black curls falling around her face, the image bears an uncanny resemblance to Andy Warhol’s 1985 Polaroid portrait of Collins. “She took control,” says Lathigra about the picture. “She knew exactly what she was doing.” Sittings with former PM Tony Blair, and music stars Mark Ronson and Lykke Li quickly followed, and soon magazines began requesting a passport photo as part of their commissions.

After the experience with Collins, Lathigra paid close attention to how individuals would code-switch depending on which type of image he was making. “In a typical portrait set-up, it’s a theatrical moment of being photographed,” he explains. “Even if I try to break that down with rapport, it’s very difficult. If you’re a person of prominence, you’re trained to act a certain way in front of the camera. When you pull out this weird contraption [Polaroid Studio Express] they understand it’s a passport camera. They know to stay still and look directly into the lens. Most people don’t smile. They take on a very different visual nuance in the way they perform. [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke was the only person beyond Collins who challenged this dynamic – [in one pose] his hand came up, covered his eye, and created an entirely different image.”

In Listening to Images, the scholar Tina Campt writes, “Even in the most constrained formats of photography – like the mugshot, the ethnographic image, the passport photograph – there is some enactment of a persona”. The sentiment is alive in Lathigra’s images, from the tilt of the head and a sly smirk to a held jaw and piercing eye contact – these subtle gestures of world-renowned faces make these images captivating and relatable.

Lathigra felt it was important to include himself in the series too. His self-portraits [below] are a poignant rumination on the intersection of masculinity and ageing that often remains hidden in contemporary culture. A direct investigation of how we hold space, what we reveal and what we hold back. “It’s important for me to be in the project if I’m asking all these different people to be open to the process,” he says. “But the self-portraits are difficult [to make] and hard to look at sometimes. It’s a boundary I didn’t think I would cross because of my vanity and ego. I have real difficulty accepting that I’m getting older, and it’s something I don’t think men talk about. Making these images has been about confronting myself.”

Intentional nuance, multiplicity and contradiction make up the conceptual force of A Democratic Portrait. Lathigra allows ideas to overlap and entangle, building narrative threads that speak to the lineage of portraiture and its contemporary evolution. The project occupies space between Warhol’s Polaroids and Luc Delahaye’s Portraits/1 while also being in dialogue with work such as Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead and Steve McQueen’s Year 3, which centre on ideas of civic and national identity while interrogating notions of the individual and the collective, status and value.

For Lathigra, it was also vital to address how the rise of social media and the creator economy is reconfiguring portraiture in unexpected ways. “When I brought the passport camera into the editorial context, I was questioning social media, how the audience reads celebrity photographs and the democracy of picturemaking in an era where everyone can take a good one,” says Lathigra. “The power balance had shifted, and I wanted to talk about that. It was no longer just about how we control our image – in terms of how we look and want to be seen in the world – it was also about how these images of celebrities and influencers had become financial assets. What does this mean for the medium in five or 10 years?”

He continues: “If you think about the history of portraiture – the pictures of celebrities from the past, whether it’s Eve Arnold’s photos of Marilyn Monroe or Dennis Stock’s of James Dean – there is authorship in their work. Instagram has changed that, and now celebrities have provenance.” Today, it is more likely that the agent selects the photographer for a shoot, taking the decision away from the photo director on set. Often the photographer is also asked to release the image’s copyright. “This is uncomfortable for me,” says Lathigra. “I wanted to challenge this new realm of control by taking it away. In making this very direct, uniform image, the promise of the project was about equality – everyone being photographed the same way.”

A Democratic Portrait is an assemblage of faces that unravels various ideas from identity, celebrity culture, and influence to freedom of movement, access, race and refuge. As a series, the project goes full circle. It subverts the terms of ID photography – to control, track and categorise people – and instead uses it to present a collective picture of humanity.

“On some level, who we are as human beings, and as a society, give prevalence or ascribe value – therein lies the democracy of passport photography,” says Lathigra. “This project stems from my romantic notion that we are all a society. I’m still interested in the same ideas and stories [10 years later] because they matter. The threads that bind my work have always been to provoke the viewer to think about where they stand. It’s a different world from when I started, and I think the full evolution is yet to come.”

kalpeshlathigra.com

Camera and collaborator

After completing her graduate degree at Yale University in 2016, O’Leary found herself thinking about those pictures again, “about the impact a photograph can have and the idea of the camera being weaponised”. She was drawn back to State College, where she planned to make portraits of women returning home at night from parties. One evening, she set up on campus with the help of several students and “as I was describing the kind of women I was looking for, I realised I sounded like a predator,” she admits. She was unnerved and immediately stopped taking pictures for a time. “This was just one of the ethical crises in portraiture that ultimately led to [my series] Spitting Image, this sense that the power dynamic was really off and I needed to figure it out.” A folder of selfies she had made as a young teenager in Ireland, emailed to O’Leary by her father around this same time, also informed the project. “I saw how I was using photography to imagine how other people saw me, and then constructing my identity – or who I wanted to be – through the pictures. That was when I started thinking about how teenagers use cameras as mirrors.” With Spitting Image, she explains, “I wanted to see the town’s impact on that young adolescent group, to know if it was something I could see. But it was also an opportunity to figure out how to make a portrait where the person photographed had more control over the final image.” After presenting her work and conceptual interests to the art classes at her former high school, O’Leary invited young women students, with parental permission, to have their portraits made. She was taken aback by how many accepted.

In the barn behind her parents’ home, O’Leary built a giant, light-tight tent for her 8X10 camera. Clamped at the far end to a two-way mirror, the lens could see the sitter, but the sitter could only see their reflection. The large format camera enabled her to capture the subtleties of each girl’s face. “I set up an extension for the camera to photograph really close up. The shallow depth-of-field enabled me to focus on expression and render an extreme amount of detail.” She continues, “I also think there’s an intimacy to that perspective, the kind of intimacy you have when looking at yourself in the mirror.” O’Leary articulates the project’s goal succinctly: “When a girl sat down and looked at the mirror, I wanted her to decide how she wanted to look.”

By neither guiding nor dictating when the exposure would be made, O’Leary empowered each subject to control their representation. “Their sign to me that they were ready was to stop moving. Only then would I focus the camera, put the film in, and make the picture.” Presented from the shoulders up, the resulting portraits are arresting. The subjects evoke unease, curiosity, self-assuredness, and everything in between through the quality of their gazes, the posturing of their heads, and the expressions on their faces. Clothing, accessories, hair and makeup vary dramatically, but what connects them all is the shared self-consciousness as they confront their reflections and struggle with how they should present themselves. Enveloped in her blonde, wavy mane, one pale-faced girl – her forehead, cheeks and chin rosed by adolescent blemishes – stares straight into the camera. Her shimmering blue eyes are magnetising. Though she focuses on the lens, her expression conveys a distance, a looking-through rather than a looking-at. Asked why the backgrounds are blue, O’Leary replies: “I was obsessed with lapis lazuli and how it was originally a signifier of value in paintings because the pigment was so expensive. I was thinking specifically about the power and importance placed on images of women.” Ultimately, O’Leary photographed over 100 female adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14: “It was a vulnerable thing for each girl to do and I felt grateful that I was allowed to witness it.”

Girls just wanna have fun

After Spitting Image, O’Leary felt she still had not directly addressed the town’s culture. She revisited her teenage journals, “trying to remember what that time was like. At a certain point, I knew the university and its party culture were central.” This time, when she returned to the subject of her hometown and Penn State, she adopted a different approach. “Instead of just doing a shoot because I had a specific idea, I now knew it was far more important to have conversations and form relationships with the people I was working with.” One morning, as she was driving with a high-school friend, she serendipitously encountered three young women – in crop tops with vape pens in hand – trying to hitchhike. “Both of us immediately thought, ‘That’s what we looked like back then.’ We asked if they needed a lift. They were freshmen who had just arrived on campus and were heading to the fraternities. I explained I was a photographer working on a project about being a young woman navigating this town and its culture. I told them to reach out if they were interested in being photographed.” To her surprise once again, they did. For their first shoot, O’Leary went to the students’ dorms to photograph as they were getting ready to go out at night. “I went with no real plan,” she recalls. “Afterwards, I remember getting the film back and seeing so many pictures I was excited about. I realised that I needed to go into the next shoot with this kind of open mind, of not trying to control the situation, but being open to the ideas they had.” In one triptych, the three women stand individually in their hallway, dressed in tight-fitting clothes that flatter their youthful physiques. Unlike the closely cropped busts of Spitting Image, these photographs communicate through both their subjects’ faces and their body language. I am reminded of Judith Joy Ross’ trio of swimsuit-clad prepubescents, faintly smiling, tentatively postured.

In arranging the next shoot, the young women eagerly cajoled, “You’re going to be so excited!” When O’Leary arrived, two of them proudly proclaimed, “We turned 18 and got tattoos!” One revealed the word ‘Happy’ on the inside of her lower lip, the other ‘Valley’. In an image cropped tightly around their heads, they firmly grip their bottom lips to reveal the words in childlike all caps [opposite]. Their brown and green eyes shine like glassy jewels. The scene is unsettling. Literally bearing marks from the town, they celebrate their branding.

After determining she needed to live in State College full-time to make the project, O’Leary rented a home on fraternity row. While she continued to work with the same three women throughout their four years in college – “in a lot of ways they were my collaborators,” she remarks – she also met and photographed other students. “I interviewed them, asking what experiences they thought were important to document, and worked with them multiple times.” Her portraits are wide-ranging, from intimate views captured at close range in domestic spaces to throngs of women – dressed in Penn State apparel, White Claw cans in hand – as if staged for an advertisement [below]. They also include disconcerting black-and-white images, evocative of surveillance footage. One photograph shows a group of women walking down the street from an elevated vantage point. “I installed a motion-activated hunting camera in a tree in my front yard,” she explains; a predatory undercurrent appropriately reverberates through the resulting pictures. The culture’s deeply rooted history is emphasised through the inclusion of decades-old vernacular material, magazine clippings and snapshots that position women at the mercy of their male counterparts.

Over the years, O’Leary became close with one of her subjects. One day, as they perused pictures of her and her friends, the woman lingered over an image. “Looking back at that photograph of herself just a few years later, she felt like she was seeing a totally different person,” O’Leary recalls. “She could see how hard she was trying and what she was dealing with in that photograph. And she said she was happy to have it.” Though these portraits may not always conjure the ‘time of your life’ attitude promised of the college experience, they are honest, tender testimony to that stage in life when you perform so many potential versions of yourself. They transcend the specificity of their environment, speaking to the universal challenge of growing into womanhood, of mimicking what you see worn, done and said around you to fit in, to belong.

Much of this work is stowed in O’Leary’s cupboard in Hanover, New Hampshire, as she continues to think about the project’s final form. The photographer eventually left Pennsylvania to teach at Dartmouth College. “It was something I had to make, but it was so emotionally taxing to work on,” she confesses. “I don’t think I realised that when I was doing it because I was so fully immersed in that place.” She clearly continues to grapple with her adolescent experience, the ethics of representation, the power dynamic intrinsic to portraiture, and the form this work will ultimately take. “It’s hard to fully communicate my experience as a young woman and the intensity of that culture. In many ways, I feel like language is never enough. I hope that these pictures can start to communicate some of that heavy feeling, of the air being thick.” Sighing, she suggests, “It might all end up in my closet for another 10 years before I figure out what it’s supposed to be.”

evaoleary.com

BV: Do you think your involvement in the Demounting Louis Agassiz committee, as well your cultural experience, being both Swiss and Haitian, has informed the way you see the world?

SH: My dual heritage gave me a lot to think about and it also became the starting point and inspiration for my work. I was concerned about family and historical events, and I was able to articulate this through my work which helped me to make sense of myself and the world we live in. Interestingly, after joining the Demounting Louis Agassiz committee, I learned that history can be renegotiated and that I could contribute to this slow process with my art. Looking back, I see that as a key moment for me, which made me step outside of the studio and become more active, not just with my work but also in my desire to collaborate with others.

BV: We have touched on some of the experiences that you draw upon when making work, but I want to delve into the role of the archive within your research. You often turn towards archival imagery as a base material when making portraits of significant historical figures like we see in your series The Firsts. How do you settle on an image or a figure to work with?

SH: My interest in photographic archives started way back. At first, I was drawn to my family’s archive. I especially admired the black-and-white portraits of my mother, Monique Huber-Remponeau, and her sister, the early generation Black fashion model Jany Tomba, and my artist grandfather, Georges Remponeau, in New York, where the family emigrated to in the mid- 1960s. Whenever I got a chance to look at the albumen prints, and boxes filled with photographs, I wanted to see and hear their stories. My mother would tell me about her apprenticeship at the Abraham photo studio during the mid-1950s in Port-au-Prince where she learned the skill of retouching portraits directly onto the ambrotype glass-plate negatives.

In 2004, I began the series Shooting Back – Reflections on Haitian Roots, criticising those individuals who contributed to the historical and social conditions in Haiti, from the 15th to 20th century. I began with a portrait of Christopher Columbus and went on to create portraits of Françoise ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier.

This was the first time I was making portraits entirely rendered using metal staples ‘shot’ onto wooden boards. I wanted to use the staple gun to metaphorically but also literally ‘shoot back’ at figures like Columbus. At the time it gave me a sense of agency and the ability to react to an unjust history. Each staple represented a life lost to the transatlantic trade as well as those adversely affected by the autocratic regime in Haiti.

I soon felt that I wanted to use my energy to create portraits of our ancestors and people who had been silenced throughout history, who were – or still are – negatively impacted by colonialism; works that commemorate and memorialise. This was a turning point for me and henceforth my shooting of staples has sought to enact a stitching of colonial wounds. It was a way for me to make visible and tend to those wounds – I started to call my works ‘pain-things’. Since then, I have made several portraiture series, such as Shooting Stars (2014– ongoing) and, as you mention, The Firsts (2017–ongoing).

BV: Tailoring Freedom (2021–2022) forms part of this ongoing advocacy work, addressing the disputed legacy of Louis Agassiz and the aforementioned daguerreotype images of seven enslaved individuals, including Renty and his daughter, Delia. The images were intended to give credence to Agassiz’s white supremacist beliefs and ‘prove’ the inferiority of Black people.

All seven of the  figures are depicted unclothed on the Edgehill Plantation in South Carolina, USA. The original daguerreotypes (now housed at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University) have been the subject of many ongoing debates around authorship, ownership and decolonial practices, especially as Tamara K Lanier – a descendent of Renty and Delia – has sought to repatriate the original photographs. Why was it important to you to create portraits of Renty and Delia to begin this work?

SH: I only found out about the daguerreotypes when I joined the Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign in 2007. When I started to work on my first reparative intervention as part of the campaign group’s renaming efforts, I went to Agassizhorn to rename the peak – physically and literally – to Rentyhorn. I carried a metal plaque featuring an illustration of Renty, alongside a short description, all the way to the peak and documented the action. In addition, I made a petition website – rentyhorn.ch – and sent a letter of request to the mayors of the communes sharing the mountain in Grindelwald, Guttannen, Fieschertal and the Unesco World Heritage Committee. 

In 2012, we received an email from Tamara K Lanier after her daughters discovered my petition. They came to an exhibition opening in Grindelwald held near the mountain to raise awareness of Agassiz’s racist history where she spoke about Renty. She gave Renty his dignity back – emphasising his importance amongst their family and sharing with everyone what kind of a person he was: he could read, he taught his children, he was spiritual, and much more. It was moving to get to know her and we have stayed in touch ever since. When Tamara filed a lawsuit against Harvard University in 2019, she wanted to retrieve her ancestors’ photographs from this powerful institution which, according to her lawyers, was still owning and ‘selling’ her ancestors through the reproduction of their portraits. 

As I understand, this action follows in the steps of enslaved people who pursued ‘freedom lawsuits’ to petition for their emancipation. Tamara’s case was dismissed by the Superior Court in March 2021 and by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in October 2022. It was not a surprise, but still a disappointment.

However, the court has permitted Tamara to pursue an ‘emotional distress claim’ against Harvard if she wishes. It is bittersweet news, and I don’t know if she will proceed. I believe that her attorneys will stay committed to her and that they will continue to support her despite not being able to free Renty and Delia as she had hoped to.

BV: These works raise crucial questions about the ethics and politics of the gaze and how we might be able to look with sensitivity at such images. As we were conceptualising the exhibition for Autograph, it was important from our perspective to draw focus onto the Tailoring Freedom portraits, situating the works in a contemplative space to further emphasise the need for reflection.

In these new portraits you have merged multiple facets of your practice to create these works, using photography and your signature staple-gun method. You have managed to depict violence without reproducing violence and each portrait refuses the role of the objective camera. Can you speak about why this body of work has been significant in your practice and why the merging of these two mediums was important?

SH: When I first started the Rentyhorn project in 2008, I made an ink drawing of Renty dressed in traditional Congolese clothing rather than stripped bare, as the daguerreotypes depict. I recently revisited these sketches, having forgotten about them. Seeing them again, I realised that subconsciously I had already imagined freedom for them through my critical fabulation. Tailoring Freedom was conceptualised before knowing the outcome of the lawsuit. Now, after Tamara’s unsuccessful efforts to gain her ancestors’ freedom through repatriating the original photographs, I returned to this methodology and these initial sketches. Having spoken with Tamara about the case on several occasions, I decided that the final portraits of Renty and Delia should be gifted to her. 

I printed the photographs of Renty and Delia onto wood, mounting them as a diptych for them to stay together. It was the first time that I married stapling with photography as usually I create the entire image from staples. I came to think, yet again, how fine clothing can be a symbol for freedom, especially because it was something enslaved people could never have. When I started to research what kind of clothing I could ‘tailor’ for them, I started to look at images of the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, both of whom were able to self-emancipate in their lifetime. Douglass’ status as the most photographed person in the USA during the 19th century was also an important aspect. 

When I showed the work to Tamara, she said that I had successfully ‘taken them out of their circumstance’ and ‘given them their dignity and humanity back’.

BV: These monochromatic works bring to life the haunting presences of the seven enslaved individuals and draw us into their gaze. In the two portraits depicting Jack and his daughter Drana [which appear on the Portrait issue’s cover], you made a conscious decision to clothe each of them as a gesture of reparation and dignity. Would you be able to share some insights into the inspirations behind the glimmering attire that has been so intricately and very beautifully woven using your signature air staple- gun method?

SH: Delia and Renty are lucky that their descendants know about them and that they fight for their freedom. This is not the case for Jack and Drana, Alfred, Fassena and Jem. We don’t know much about them, or if they have descendants. I felt it was important to collectively remember all seven of the figures from the daguerreotypes because they were a community. They knew each other. Now within this complete series they are all together, side by side.

I’ve depicted Drana in a dress inspired by Sojourner Truth whose liberation history is remarkable; she went to court back in 1828 to fight for the recovery of her son from slavery and was the first Black woman to win such a case against a white man. During the making of this work, bell hooks’ book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) was something I returned to. The title, Ain’t I a Woman, is taken from a speech given by Sojourner Truth – one of history’s most important speeches on abolition and women’s rights ever given. It gave me a deeper understanding of the precarity of Black womanhood during slavery, the racism and sexism women were exposed to, and how this history affects our present time.

BV: What does it mean for you to have this collection of works displayed at Autograph, given our history of redressing archives and of bringing often unheard narratives to light?

SH: I have been acquainted with Autograph’s work since 2010, so to see my exhibition come to life in the gallery space feels like a dream, like my work has come full circle in a way. Tailoring Freedom resonates especially strongly with Autograph’s philosophy, I think. I’m incredibly grateful that I have been able to develop this series and bring together so many years of work and advocacy to the public to understand the embedded histories alongside a dedicated book, YOU NAME IT. It means a lot to me and I’m grateful to everybody who has supported me in this ongoing journey.

Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT is on show at Autograph, London, until 25 March 2023, and has been curated by Renée Mussai, Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora. 

A hardcover monograph has been co-published by Autograph, The Power Plant and Mousse Publishing to accompany the exhibition.

YOU NAME IT was initiated, organised, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; Autograph, London; and Turku Art Museum, Finland.

“The studio photographer became a point of pride and a source for affirming images for Black Americans. Self-representation was very important, but it was also a metaphorical self-possession for a figure like Frederick Douglass.”

Sala Elise Patterson: How was this exhibition born?

Brian Piper: First, I must say that Dr Deborah Willis laid the groundwork for this field, helping to create the study of Black photography. What first drew me to this project and topic personally was thinking about Black photography studios as potential places for the development of culture and political life as well as for commerce and art. The photo studio was where a diverse cross-section of Black Americans would come during the first century following photography’s invention because it was less common for people to own a camera in general. And having your portrait made was so important for Black Americans during this period.

As the project progressed, it became more of a story about the role of these spaces in American photographic history and the work that was done there. That includes the extent to which these photographers were included or not in the stories that mainstream Western art museums tell about the history of American photography.

SP: Tell me about the importance placed on portraiture within the Black community in photography’s early days.

BP: Many thinkers and leaders, from Frederick Douglass to Ida B Wells to WEB Du Bois, articulated how mainstream visual culture would not treat Black people and Black bodies with care or affirmation. So the studio photographer became a point of pride and a source for affirming images for Black Americans. Self-representation was very important, but it was also a metaphorical self-possession for a figure like Douglass.

“Photography and power are wrapped up in one. The camera has historically been used in negative ways towards Black people. Taking control of that was a powerful thing that these photographers were engaged in.”

SP: As traditional as many of these images appear, they are quite radical. Can you talk about that? 

BP: Photography and power are wrapped up in one. The camera has historically been used in negative ways towards Black people. Taking control of that was a powerful thing that these photographers were engaged in. One photographer in the show that stands out in that regard is a contemporary artist, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. He is a portrait photographer who makes images that tell us about the sitter but allow that individual to maintain some privacy; to keep something for themselves. Many of the people he photographs are Black women and Black queer people. He’s thinking about how cameras, portraiture and photography have been employed to dehumanise these individuals.

We’ve also included work from Endia Beal from a series where she photographed Black women in their homes in front of a backdrop that looks like it could be from one of these commercial studios. But it’s essentially a picture of a cubicle farm. Part of the work is their testimony about working in white corporate workplaces. So there are photographers who – whether it’s a nod or a more explicit reference – are thinking about the structures of portrait photography and bringing them to work that is more consciously fine art. But also, in some ways, more overtly political. That engagement and thinking will push the field forward for years to come. 

SP: Were early studio portraits something that people, regardless of class and standing in the Black community, would have prized? 

BP: That is something the show also tries to go into: that as much as they were liberatory, in some ways, these spaces could also be very restrictive in terms of class and gender prescriptions. Respectability politics was a significant factor in how people in this era wanted their photographs to look. So it was uncommon to see different representations of occupations, economic levels or gender and sexuality expressions. They appear in some images, which are some of the most interesting works in the exhibition. Indeed, as much as these studios were aspirational, they could also be restrictive to parts of Black identity. [Cultural theorist and activist] bell hooks has written about how these positive images were incredibly powerful, moving and important in terms of self-worth and self representation. But in some ways they might have precluded different kinds of Black expressive culture.

SP: How did you decide on which photographers to include?

BP: The photographers we chose were adept at making portraits but also at fine finishing techniques and different editorial tropes. They’re also very good at making photographs outside of the studio. I wanted to show how those two sides of their practices were inextricable. I also wanted to illustrate that it was happening across the country, in every region and some cities. It gives people a chance to think about what differences existed in different spaces or communities and how the photographic output of these men and women reflected that.

SP: What is the gender breakdown of photographers in the show? 

BP: I would have liked to include more women whose names were on the front of the studio. But the work in portrait studios – by Black and white photographers – was often very gendered. Studio portraits involved retouching the negative to mask imperfections and sometimes tinting the prints. Often that work was completed by women. They’re all part of this story, but they don’t necessarily have their names on the studio. One example of a woman-led studio that we have been able to include was Florestine Perrault Collins, here in New Orleans. She ran several successful studios under her name, initially in her home and then in a commercial space. When she opened her studio in 1920, she was the first Black woman photographer in the city and was the only one for quite some time.

SP: How did most of these photographers come to the discipline? 

BP: It changed over time, like most things. Augustus Washington took it up when people would go to the optician, order a lens, build their own camera and learn how to make daguerreotypes or have somebody teach them. He learned so that he could support himself through Dartmouth College. James Presley Ball learned from another Black photographer from Boston who came to Virginia and taught him. Then Ball moved around, settled in Cincinnati, taught his brother and Alexander Thomas. Eventually Ball taught his own son and daughter to make photographs. Addison Scurlock learned from photographer Moses Rice then taught his sons, Robert and George. So it would often spread through families, networks and apprenticeships.

As Black photographers began to grow in number, several of them learned from each other. That’s an important story because film technology was not designed to properly render Black people’s skin tones, and that information was not in trade manuals. So Black photographers had to learn from each other and through practice to effectively photograph their customers. After World War Two, several studios started formal education programmes to train Black veterans who had come home to be photographers. It was also a very savvy business move because these veterans were coming home with money from the GI Bill and looking for places to spend it. So it was a way to buoy their studio businesses and create more photographers. Robert Scurlock started the Capital School of Photography in Washington, DC, in 1948, an integrated and co-educational school.

Finally, a number of photographers in the show either learned to be photographers or honed their craft in the armed services. Ernest Withers, for one. Austin Hansen started taking photographs as a young man in the Virgin Islands and then joined the Navy and learned more. Marvin Smith joined the Navy and taught other sailors how to photograph. So that was also a driver of photographic industries in Black communities after the World Wars.

SP: One point you have made is that Black studio photographers have been operating at the medium’s cutting edge since its invention. What has been the effect on fine art photography?

BP: While studio photographers, especially Black studio photographers, have been thought of as outside the developments in ‘art photography’, they’re absolutely pushing it forward. They’re cognisant of everything that’s happening in the field and are capable of adopting what would have been referred to elsewhere as pictorial techniques, like shallow depth-of-field, highly retouched negatives and things that people often associate with pictorial photography as practised by Alfred Stieglitz, early Imogen Cunningham and others. They’re bringing that into the portrait studio. But they’re also able to apply what they’re doing in their community for event photography or advertising. Work by other photographers in the exhibition falls under modernism, focusing on form and light. Everything we are used to talking about in photography, they’re doing it and pushing it forward.

SP: What do you hope the effect of this show will be for the museum and the community? 

BP: For so long, photo studios were neglected from the art museum because they were considered commercial. I hope the exhibition makes the point that these photographs can be for the everyday, but they can be spectacular too. The show is also an effort to expand what people can expect to see on the wall of a museum – expand who is in that picture, who made that picture and the number of stories we’re telling at NOMA. People are rethinking what museums are for and what they should do. And I hope this exhibition is part of that effort.

Finally, I hope the show will enrich people’s understanding of photographic history and that several of the photographers get their own solo exhibitions. While some of the names are familiar worldwide, others deserve greater recognition. I hope that a number of projects will come out of this one

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers runs until January 8, 2023 at New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

Fosso’s work is often equated with that of Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta: all pillars of beautiful studio portraiture from the African continent (in 1997 the three were commissioned by Parisian department store Tati – located in Barbès, a neighbourhood where many African immigrants live – to recreate the African photo studio). But Nigerian curator and art critic Okwui Enwezor situated Fosso’s work as more akin to that of Pierre Molinier, the French self-portraitist who toyed with gender codes, and Yasumasa Morimura, the Japanese performer/photographer who places himself within iconic artworks. In a future-facing timeline, Fosso seems an indelible precedent to Omar Victor Diop and the idea of channelling the self to vehicle the past in a way that powerfully deconstructs stereotypes about African identities.

The selection of over 200 photos at Huis Marseille, spanning from the 1970s to today, was, “as exhaustive as possible by selecting what best embodied each period of my work,” Fosso states. “It was important to cover the different aspects of my journey: each series of self-portraits is represented, and there is also a good overview of my work as a studio portraitist.” He notes that the period from the 70s was the hardest to extract a selection from: “At that time, I didn’t yet consider myself an artist; retaining, a posteriori, the best of this continuous flow was a very interesting challenge.” 

Although often a wholly independent actor, Fosso has also dabbled in collaborative endeavours. In 1999, he shot a 10-image autumn/winter editorial for Vogue Hommes International in his Bangui studio, and in 2021, he featured in an issue of A Magazine Curated By helmed by menswear designer Grace Wales Bonner. The motivational thrust for these is underpinned by “un goût profond pour la mode” – “a deep love of fashion” – something that has been true for him ever since adolescence. For his contemporary collaboration with Wales Bonner, who situates her aesthetic as “European heritage with an Afro Atlantic spirit”, Fosso fondly praised the dapper styling: “I wore the outfits proposed as naturally as I would have in any series.”

“My creativity has always been intimately linked to what I have experienced”

Fosso’s career and visibility grew over decades until he weathered the unthinkable in 2014: the destruction of his house and the looting of his equipment and archives. This “constituted a trauma from which I still have not recovered,” he recalls. “The lost material, the violence of the event and the atrocities of the civil war [Biafran War] plunged me into a deep depression for which I had to be treated and whose consequences I still suffer today.” After this excruciating experience he was forced to reinvent himself, while journalists, photographers and international organisations helped him recover the bulk of his negatives. 

He refused to be defeated by this, however, saying: “My creativity has always been intimately linked to what I have experienced and I would say that the series SIXSIXSIX, which followed the atrocities of 2014, reflects the inspiration that I draw from the worst times of my life.” These many hundreds of self-portrait Polaroids were made to represent the ecstatic and excruciating range life brings to the surface. The series, made in 2015–2016, presents an obsessive, repetitive, affirming study of states of emotion. “After these wars and all the hardships I have suffered,” Fosso says, “I still have life, and photography helps me to continue on this path.”

“My body is effectively an intermediary, my face is only a mask, I am always ‘behind’ the subject,” Fosso states. “But once the photo is taken, what we see there is the subject himself – the one whose story I tell. In the picture, it’s him: it’s no longer me. When I introduce someone, I become that person.”

 

Asked if he considers his portraits to have a performative aspect given his preponderance for costumes, Fosso is quick to reframe the manner in which he sees his work. “I want to clarify that I don’t do theatre: I approach my work in an authentic way. What I mean by that is that I’m not ‘acting’. Of course I play a character, whose story I want to tell for the duration of a shot, but the ‘staging’ aspect is not what I find most essential… When I pose in front of the lens, I really am this person that I embody.” He negotiates between functioning as a conduit and relaying something autobiographical: “My body is effectively an intermediary, my face is only a mask, I am always ‘behind’ the subject,” Fosso states. “But once the photo is taken, what we see there is the subject himself – the one whose story I tell. In the picture, it’s him: it’s no longer me. When I introduce someone, I become that person.”

The blurring of the line between ‘self’ and ‘other’ even further is facilitated by the sartorialism shaping Fosso’s aesthetic. “I decide very meticulously on each detail of clothing, so that it better reflects the story I want to tell,” he says. But he adds: “I don’t have a fetishistic relationship to the clothes I use during the shots. Most of the time, the costumes are rented or lent from specialised shops for the duration of the series”. He cites the military costumes of his series ALLONZENFANS (2013) and the accessories for his 2003 series Le Rêve de Mon Grand-père as examples of stretching his personhood and imagination through donning a soldier’s uniform or a shaman’s robes. “I return these costumes,” he says, “just as I return to my own identity.”

The exception to this act of ‘borrowing’ was the elegant made-to-measure cream-coloured garment he had fashioned by Gammarelli – the official tailor of the Pope, located in Rome, operational since 1798 – for his 2017 series Black Pope. And, of course, the clothes he sported in his 70s-era series of debut studio self-portraits were his own: he bought them, or designed them, based upon what was trendy at the time among the youth in Bangui (which, in turn, was heavily influenced by the stylishly dressed iconic musicians of the epoch). 

“My art is not political, I do not do politics.”

Fosso describes his current photographic practice as being prefaced by catching up on current events and news. Nonetheless, “My art is not political, I do not do politics,” Fosso emphasises. His photographic act is “to bear witness to the past for current and future generations, to fill in the gaps in the communal narrative.” He intends to transcend the “power games” of politics. “My work is more like that of a historian,” he insists. “I speak about history.” After committing to a theme when something stays with him, he creates precise lists of costumes, accessories, décor; he starts doing research and visiting archives to compare and contrast possible aesthetics and styles, examining different ‘realities’ from which to create his own mise-en-scène.

Asked if he would ever continue his signature 2008 African Spirits series with a new set of icons – having already spotlighted Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and other prominent figures from 20th-century Black liberation movements with his personal twist – he admits: “It’s funny that you ask me that question, because I’m thinking of ways to complete the series.” He remains mum about further details: “I never talk about my projects in progress… I don’t like to disclose my series in advance.” Although deeply tethered to his origins, Fosso does not feel he folds into a specific community or territory, describing his approach as fundamentally global: “I can talk about China, Americans, Europeans as well as Africans.”

Black representation is unquestionably important to Fosso, but he gravitates towards a more expansive view of what a representational paradigm can encompass conceptually. “While the question of identity is, in certain aspects, central to my work, I would like – in a utopian way – for the cultural sector and for humanity to rise above these questions,” he says. “Each person has both so many indefinable particularities and universal aspects, which we all recognise in ourselves.

Samuelfosso.com

Samuel Fosso is on show at Huis Marseille from 10 December 2022 to 12 March 2023. 

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris) and the Walther Collection (Neu-Ulm, Germany), with the support from the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne (Switzerland).

The narrative of Unframing Colonialism winds through six core themes. Among them is ‘The Ethnography Show’, a section which details the renewed interest in ethnography during the period and the role photography played in it. Magazines and museums sent photographers all around the world to capture images of paradisal landscapes, marvelled at by readers back home in Europe, longing for an escape. They travelled further and further, namely in Africa and Tahiti, vying to capture authentic, never-before-seen imagery of ‘exotic’ life. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Marc Allégret were among them, but slowly became disillusioned with the colonial context and moved away from cliched assignments. Some cheaper, weekly magazines exaggerated the ‘exotic’ theme, publishing questionable stories on community folklore and tradition on violent behaviour and cannibalism.

In ‘Body Models’ the focus turns to the fetishisation and eroticism of Black bodies, “fuelled by the vogue of ‘negrophilia’ during the interwar period” as the exhibition text reads. A harrowing vitrine in the centre of the room displays dozens of archival magazine spreads depicting young, naked ‘women from the colonies’.

Later we see a shift towards a narrative that focused on the economic and resource-led benefits of the French empire. A policy of assimilation over ‘othering’ ensued. Here, we see a presentation of portraits of colonised people by the more humanist lenses of André Steiner, Thérèse Le Prat and members of the Alliance-Photo agency. Finally, examples of a new documentary style by the likes of Eli Lotar and Jacques-André Boifard, who consciously criticised the colonial project in their images. Still, the exhibition’s overall sentiment does not shy away from stating that there was still a long way to go. 

At every turn, a strong emphasis is placed on the context of the image. Detailed captions elaborate on the author’s position, but also the circumstances under which the image was commissioned and taken, where and why it was first published, and how it was received. The press and its role in circulating visual propaganda is highlighted too. It makes for a rounded and critical viewing experience. Anti-colonialist essays and poems illuminated on screens intersperse the framed archives, collages and vinyls on the wall. Through headphones, one can listen to the audio recordings of Rocé and Casey – two French rappers whose personal work speaks to French colonial history and their experience of it – reading these texts.

“As the topic of decolonisation is discussed in this country, we as an institution must use critical tools to reflect on our collection. It’s our responsibility to face it.”

All the works come from the Pompidou’s photography department collection and the Biblioteque Kandinsky. Damarice Amao, curator of Photography at the Pompidou, says that this is an important aspect of this show. “It was not easy, as people are a little bit afraid,” she explains. “It’s a reflection [on the collection] that we have continued for some years, starting with a show called Photography as a Class Weapon, which we made four years ago. As the topic of decolonisation is discussed in this country, we as an institution must use critical tools to reflect on our collection. It’s our responsibility to face it.”

“I hope that people will understand the idea even if they are shocked,” Amao adds. “Some photographs here are not easy to view. Depending on your sensibility, you might be more shocked by one or two. But that is why a museum is the right place to do it. It’s a safe space to address it.”

Unframing Colonialism is on show at the Centre Pompidou until 27 February 2023

Weems’ landmark series remains poignant today, over 30 years since she made it. The photographs speak to the ways in which selfhood shifts over time, the roles we play and the social contract of intimate relationships. While Weems focused on women and how they occupy space around the world, London-based Ryan Prince builds on the lineage of The Kitchen Table Series to explore identity, representation and authorship, and familiar mythology in his work Can You Sit for Me?.

“The project is about showing a typology of a modern Black British family,” says Prince. “I was interested in subverting 19th-century ethnographic photography to challenge the racialised gaze. Creating positive imagery plays a vital part in that. On one level, the work is about exploring my family, but I’m also interested in visualising a Black family free from stereotypes.” 

Prince began photographing his family while studying for an MA at the University of Westminster in 2019. A supportive tutor pushed him to interrogate the personal, so he started documenting his stepdad, Mark. He photographed Mark relaxing with his friends as they reflected upon their experiences growing up in Jamaica, as well as taking care of his mother Estalla, Prince’s grandmother. “I’d never seen that side of my dad and grandma’s relationship before,” he shares. “It led me to contemplate the bond I share with my mother and how it shaped who I am. I’ve been [going to] therapy for the last four years, and I’ve learned a lot about myself through this intentional interrogation of my upbringing and familial relationships.”

Prince lets us into the dissonance of family life by sequencing formal portraits of each family member with casual moments of play and interaction. While the photographs are striking, it is the tension between them that holds space for nuance and allows for new narratives to emerge. Prince’s fascination with the pioneering child and family psychiatrist John Byng-Hall and his idea of the ‘familial mythology’ informed this approach. The notion that family members perceive events differently and how that leads to false or edited beliefs that alter long-term relationships, affect self perceptions and reshape family history.

While Can You Sit for Me? allows us into Prince’s experience of the domestic space, it also speaks to the power of the everyday and how the ritual of family photography has played a critical role in the visual archive of Black life. Vernacular photography has been a site of identity formation and self-determination for generations sitting in opposition to the colonial project. It is also a space of innocence and joy, a place to be free from the baggage of precarity. 

“For me, there are two veins of photographic history of Black people,” says Prince. “The images used to oppress us and the hidden history of Black life that lives in family albums. The latter, full of everyday moments, celebrations and gatherings, has always been there. We just don’t see this history publicly. There is a big push right now of Black creatives trying to tell their story and what it means to them to counter this perception of Blackness as a monolith. With Can You Sit for Me?, I’m trying to add to that collective consciousness.“

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