Proximity is not knowledge
Being close to a life can change what a photographer sees, but proximity is not the same as knowledge. Even shared identity, culture or intimacy cannot guarantee that another person has been truly seen.
Foundation
5 Posts
Who gets to decide who matters?
History tends to ask who changed the world. Family photographs ask who changed us. That difference reveals another way of thinking about photographic significance, memory and Black life.
A photograph can outlive the person it photographs
A photograph can preserve someone's face with extraordinary precision while preserving very little of the life that face belonged to. What happens when the image becomes more recognisable than the person?
The gaze begins before the photograph
We often think a photographer's gaze begins when the camera is raised. But the most important decisions may already have been made. What if photographic instinct is partly inherited judgement?
Black life does not need to explain itself
What happens when Black people no longer have to represent something for the camera? The Black gaze makes room for Black life that is ordinary, contradictory and unexplained.