Photography and Community

(energetic pop music)

- Hello and welcome to the
Chicago Humanities Festival

and today's program,
"Photography and Community."

My name is Phillip Bahar

and I'm the executive
director of the Festival.

You can learn more about
our upcoming events

at ChicagoHumanities.org.

And while you're there,

if you'd like to make a
donation or become a member,

it would be greatly appreciated

and will enable us to
bring our programs to life

throughout the year.

I wanna thank our captioner

for making tonight's
event more accessible.

All of our digital events
have closed captioning

that can be controlled through YouTube.

Today's program is developed
in collaboration with

the Smart Museum of Art at
the University of Chicago

as part of their multi-exhibition
and programs series,

"Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change,

and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40."

Thank you to all our
colleagues at the Smart Museum

for their partnership and incredible work.

And thank you to

David C. and Sarajean
Ruttenberg Arts Foundation

for generously underwriting

the festival's photography
programs this fall.

If you have any questions
for our panelists

during the session,

please share them in the YouTube chat

and we'll get to as many as we can.

Unfortunately,

Debra Willis is unable
to join us this evening

due to technical difficulties
out East driven by weather.

So please help me in welcoming

tonight's additional presenters,

all of whom are ready
to share their thoughts

about photography and their
power and community with you.

The panelists include the
photographer Wendy Ewald,

documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah,

and the artist Carlos Javier Ortiz.

With that, enjoy the program

and the artists you're about to hear from,

and thank you for joining us.

- Thank you for the introduction.

Wendy, Louis,

it's a real pleasure to
be here with you all.

I'm sorry we're missing Debra.

And I think I'll start with my slides

really talking about

where my work starts from.

Anthony, do you mind putting
up the first slide, please?

My work, for me, really starts

with the place where I come from, right,

which is Black and brown communities.

I grew up in Chicago.

I was born in Puerto Rico.

I was raised in Chicago,

and I was raised at a time in the 80s,

early 80s to the mid-90s,

where I was influenced by street culture,

mostly because you didn't really have a TV

and you were hanging out on the streets

and you were seeing what life really...

The stage that took
place was in your porch

outside of the house.

And so the neighborhood I came to

was Black, Puerto Rican, Filipino.

It was the first LGBTQ community

that was moving into the neighborhood

and living there amongst everybody else.

And that was the beginning
of the influence that I had.

And also television,

I didn't have my first color television

until my grandfather got us one,

and that was later on in life.

But I was always watching a
lot of black and white imaging.

And I think that stuck in my brain.

It made me think about composition

and the movement of body
language and people.

And it really made me think about

the way we compose ourselves.

So I was influenced by a lot of

great black and white
television back in the day.

Next slide, please.

And when I got old enough

to really think about
my artistic practice,

which started with photography,

it actually started with
painting in high school,

but I couldn't paint,
so I found photography

and it was really easy to communicate.

And then it was real difficult to master.

And from photography it went on to film,

I always wanted to do film,

but I couldn't afford to buy any film.

So I stuck to the still image

because cinema was so
expensive in college.

And so I stuck to the still image

and I just really learned
how to take pictures.

I worked at the Chicago Defender

and then later on in life,

I worked at Ebony Magazine,

and I always worked in
Black and brown communities.

For a long time,

I lived in Philadelphia for a while too,

and I came back from
Philly with a thought of,

I saw a lot of gun violence
happening in Chicago

as well as in Philadelphia

and I really wanted to address it.

And the way I approached it,

I approached it in a way
of talking to families

and approaching it in the way
of the aftermath of violence.

What happens to a community,

it's not just the gun violence,

but what happens to the community?

How do they build, how
do they stick together?

And I wanted to show that joy

within Black and brown communities,

that joy of life, how people celebrate,

how people come together.

Next slide, please.

And so again, through photography,

through the 35-millimeter format,

changing, I tried everything,

I tried every single format,

but I found Polaroid to be a way

of really communicating with people

because I can give them an image

and I can also keep a
negative, take a portrait.

So I use this format a lot.

Next slide.

And at the same time as
I was using that format,

I started exploring filmmaking

when filmmaking became
basically inexpensive

to be able to make a film.

And you always have this ambition

of making a feature film,

but I settled for shorts,

making shorts, which is just as good.

And I never really thought
about putting my work

into film festivals.

And then I was approached by a filmmaker

who encouraged me to put my
work into film festivals.

And I started doing that.

And then it just opened up
a whole different world.

This is a film, "A Thousand Midnights."

It's influenced by family.

It's influenced by the
death of Emmett Till,

but also the death of
young people in Chicago

and other cities in the United States.

Next slide.

And so, when I started the project,

it started through photography,

but then it evolved to film

and it evolved to ephemera that I found

that was part of the work.

And one thing led to the next,

and it just became a document

from the still image to the moving image

to everything in between,

the evidence of these things taking place

in our lifetime.

And then also coming back, right,

that celebration of Emmett
Till's life and death,

and how for such a long time, actually,

the story of Emmett Till went away

and now it's taking place back.

People are starting to really talk about

the death of Emmett Till,

but in Chicago,

it was always something in the background.

I interviewed people

who went to the funeral

and she talked about
how long the line was,

how hot the day was,

how her watch just stuck to
her hand and left a tan mark.

And then she saw his face in this casket.

There's family members of Emmett Till

who are still alive in Chicago.

So the story is very close to home,

even though this took
place in Mississippi.

So I encourage people to
think about storytelling

from home, from community,

and then those stories
sometimes have a bigger portal

to other worlds and other places.

They're not really far
away from each other.

Next slide.

And so this is how I take my work

from conception of photography to film

then to the exhibition,

but also into the print media
and into film festivals.

Next slide, please.

This is a show I had at MOCP.

There's three exhibitions,

Dawoud Bey, David Schalliol.

It was a year and a half ago.

That's how my work really takes place.

It just starts through
one idea, one thing,

and then it leads to
another thing and another.

(timer chiming)
That's my timer.

So I'm gonna pass the torch

to the next presenter.

- Well, I can go, I guess. (chuckling)

I started doing this type
of work in the community,

actually, it was by accident, in a way.

When I was in high school

and it was the summer after the...

And I was in Detroit,

the summer after the '67 uprising.

I volunteered at a settlement house,

which was an incredible place

to be able to be around at that time,

because it was the center of
the movement for young people.

And people also were being paid

to go to the settlement house

in order to prevent another riot,

"riot" from happening.

And so it was an
incredible education for me

to be in the middle of that.

And I wasn't living in that community,

but I drove my car down there.

And so that stuck with me forever.

I realized that maybe that wasn't the time

that I should have been there.

And I was very grateful that I was there.

So that started,

then all through college,

I worked on two different
First Nations communities

in Canada.

And at that point I realized that

I could and wanted to
work with young people

taking photographs.

Polaroid gave me cameras and film,

and this was 1969.

It was really "pre" so much

in the Native American culture

as far as being able to see
and talk about themselves.

And I'm still working with that material

from 1969, actually.

And it has morphed into a
lot of different things.

I'm just working on a piece of the show

that's got '69 and then 39 years later,

and then a project within that

where people started taking
the pictures from '69

all the way up

and then putting the
pictures in the community

and putting them on their
site and combining them.

That's something that has
gone through everything.

With this, why I'm in Chicago,

I'm not, I'm virtually in Chicago,

is as part of the "Common
Cause" exhibition and project.

I, a few years ago,

started working a lot

with immigrant communities
in this country.

Well, first I started in the UK,

and then in this country and here,

and I had to do it virtually

because I don't live in Chicago.

So there's all that.

For me, it's so difficult

not to have a personal connection,

to be in the same place.

So I ended up working with

Centro Romero,

for those that don't know,

it's a legal aid organization
that's multifaceted

and has a youth program.

And so I was working with the young people

to make photographs,

to write, to draw,

to explore

both their parents' journeys

to where they are now and,

and their own.

And then also,

since the pandemic started

in the beginning of the project,

so then the pandemic became

a subject of their work.

Then I was able to come to Chicago

and then was working with them,

making portraits with them

and also making collages with them

of their photographs.

So, first slide.

So the first one is

with one of the young women, Adriana,

whose family came...

All of these kids,

their families or they
themselves came from Mexico,

either Michoacan or Guerrero.

And Adriana's mother

had her kids in the US,

but she was part of a
big family of nine kids.

And they came to the US one by one,

and she was the youngest.

So she came by herself at age 15

in a group but with nobody she knew.

And Adriana really explored

her mother's journey,

what her mother is doing now

and how much respect she
has for her struggle.

I asked them to make maps of the journeys.

And then I combine those with photographs,

we did this together,

photographs that they made.

And then eventually when
I got back to Chicago,

or when I got to Chicago,

I was able to make a studio

in part of an extension of Centro Romero,

which now, fortunately, we hope

is gonna become a gallery

and a part of Centro

but also be part of that
community and ongoing.

So that there'll be a
gallery that's dedicated

to the subject of immigration.

- Are these new images
that you're showing?

- It's all brand new,

and it's at Weinberg/Newton right now.

- Oh, wow. Look, here we go.

- There we go. Yay!

- (chuckling) They'll
come up. They'll come up.

I promise they'll come up.

- Anyway, then I made a studio

with lots of help from other people.

And it was really important to me

to be able to use an
incredibly sharp camera.

So I had never used it before,

but it's amazing.

If you haven't, try it
(laughing) if you can.

It's amazing because what you can get is,

you can really look into somebody's eyes

in a way that I've never felt before,

the person you're photographing.

- What camera are you using?

- It's a...

Oh, shoot.

Fuji GFX

100, I think.

Yeah.

And so so it's not that heavy.

It is technically for
me since I'm a Luddite,

but it's not hard to use

and you can focus it

so that it will focus only
on the eyes, for example.

So you have all this...

You can work fast.

Because it was really hard for me.

I don't know about you, Carlos.

Moving out of black and white,

I did not wanna leave black and white.

And I used that Polaroid film.

- To me,

I've been using color forever,

but when the digital and
the color came together,

I couldn't work it.

Now I think things have changed

where you can assimilate the digital color

to the color negative.

But the color negative or the slide film,

it's magical, right?

So it was very hard.

Digital has come a long way

where you can get there.

So I scratched that

and I went back to what I was seeing,

thought about the black
and white television

when I was a kid

where the color didn't distract anything,

it was just a black and white image

and then you can tell
a story in that format.

But people think you can't shoot color

and we can shoot color, we see color.

We live this life in color

but there's also those two things,

it's not something you can force

in any of the formats,

in the moving image or in stills.

So how do you feel about that, Louis?

- Well...

- How do you feel about that?

'Cause you probably went from film, right,

from shooting film on a 16-mil or 8-mil

or 35-mil to this other format.

- Actually, I didn't.

My route is a little bit different,

in that

I initially was interested in video.

Before video was digital,

before video had high resolution.

The artists and the
people that brought me in

were folks like Philip Mallory Jones,

who's an artist,

certainly Nam June Paik,

Beryl Korot,

a lot of folks that worked
around Ellis Haizlip.

There a program that Ellis Haizlip created

called "Soul" that was
really pushing video

in the late '60s and early '70s.

So I really came into
time-based media through video.

I studied film and made films.

It was 16 millimeter.

I really was interested
in the aesthetics of video

and how we take in video,

the historic way that we received video.

Video was a way of capturing actuality,

whereas film was more distant,

it was more abstracted
and was more narrative.

And it's interesting,

Deb Willis really is very much present.

So first,

I'm honored to be sharing this screen

with Wendy and Carlos and
Deb who is here in spirit.

And really, Ellis Haizlip
was how I met Deb Willis

back in the 1970s.

And I think

I really looked at video
as a mode of communication.

And the communication was
not just what you recorded,

but it was how it was received.

And one of the first experiences

that was transformative

and has everything to do
with the work I do now

was sitting watching video,

not necessarily on TV,

not watching film in a movie theater,

but watching video in a small space

where you can actually have
conversations with people,

so that video was an
element in communication.

So the communication begins
with what you capture,

but it is realized once you
have the audience there.

And that really is the root of it.

And it was really in that context

that I first met Deb Willis.

I worked in television and I
worked in public television.

I worked first as a writer,

something called the continuity writer,

something that doesn't
even (indistinct) anymore,

and worked on a TV series,

"Eyes on the Prize,"

which is a history of the civil rights

and Black freedom struggle,

made documentaries on folks

and still am actually doing that.

But in addition to that,
really wanted to make sure,

and this goes back to how that experience,

that transformative experience

of watching video
collectively with people,

was really looking at time-based media,

not for something for
only for movie theaters,

not something only for television,

not something only for
the internet screen,

but something that could
happen, could be seen,

can be experienced in community settings.

And the authenticating audience

is that audience that perceives,

that gets it in community settings.

And so that led me to
create a media art center

in Philadelphia, Scribe Video Center,

as a place where people
could come together

to learn the technology

of time-based media production

and the craft of time-based
media production,

but also the way you construct,

the craft of writing with video basically,

and how you can use video
as a narrative form.

And so a lot of the work of community,

I say community and time-based media,

not just community and photography for me,

is really

working with community groups

and helping them really gain
literacy with video making.

I know this is a Chicago-based panel,

even though we're all in different places.

One of the pretty extraordinary
institutions in Chicago

is the National Public Housing Museum.

And one of the projects that
we've had in Philadelphia

is this community oral history project,

where we put two filmmakers
with a community group

for about six or seven months

to create some sort of documentary

about that place.

And these documentaries are not meant

for commercial success,

and they're not meant for (indistinct)

as entertainment,

or we hope they are entertaining

and we hope that they attract people.

But they're really meant
as films of utility,

films that maybe in showing that

this neighborhood should not be bulldozed

as a tool in fighting eminent domain,

or maybe as a tool to
work for more green space,

or maybe as a neighborhood gets gentrified

so that the incoming folks realize,

no, this was not a wasteland.

This was a land where people had lived

for many, many generations,

and part of being in this new neighborhood

is having a respect for that neighborhood.

(people talking over each other)

- [Woman] The magical community

of West Philadelphia.
- That I had to tell

about my community...

- [Man] People were saying,

"I'm here. I'm alive. I exist."

(birds singing)

- I live up there.
- I live up there.

- I live on the street!
(energetic percussive music)

(gentle piano music)

(upbeat pop music)

- Norris Homes was a community

that people shared and cared
and enjoyed each other.

- The idea of growing up here at Norris

was unbelievable for me.

When I think about it,
I think about the love.

I think about the community,

the family that we all
have with one another.

- These projects helped me
become the person that I am.

- You must never say We
come from the ghetto.

We come out of a community

where people have said to themselves

that in spite of, we can do better.

- Ain't no Norris community no more.

They smoked us. They weeded us out.

And Norris is over with.

Look, we behind Norris.

The doors, the windows is tripped up.

(indistinct) It's over.
They got us. They won.

- I would like to speak
about in the beginning.

I was brought here in 1943
at three months of age

and a wonderful Good Samaritan took me in

and began to mold me,

took me and gave me love and compassion,

and with no money.

Not coming out of her womb,

but I became her child.

She took and rocked me

in the bosom of her love and kindness.

Then Norris home started to be built

from 1948 all the way up to 1952.

Because of the kindness of
people in the neighborhood,

the community helped out.

- When I moved here, I
really didn't like it

'cause it was the projects.

- I hear people say,

"Oh, I don't wanna tell people

I lived in the projects."

I loved living in the projects.

I loved growing up here.

I loved all the people
that I met growing up here,

and I don't have no regrets.

And I'm still in love with all the people

that I grew up with.

They might not have a whole lot of money,

but they got upbringing.

- What I experienced here

was nothing but love,

growth, living together as one.

- Growing up in the project

was the reason why we wasn't poor.

My father could afford to take care of us.

He was a laborer.

He didn't make a lot of money.

And he had a lot of children.

So project is what made us able to have

the kind of life that we lived.

- Uptown Theater was just
right around the corner.

And everybody in the community
would go to the Uptown

to see all the different shows.

And we had a few entertainers

that was right in the neighborhood.

Brenda Payton from Brenda
and the Tabulations,

they lived right around
the corner from me.

(woman singing indistinctly)

- So many successful
people come out of here.

- We had Jamaaladeen,
who's a great bassist.

We had Galen Baker, that
played for the Globetrotters.

We have Morgan, who is a great artist,

and so many others that grew up at Norris.

- [Roland] Temple was three blocks long.

- And as the time went on,

Temple started to expand little by little.

- Everybody in the
neighborhood used to say,

"Ooh, Temple University's gonna get it."

It was always a warning sign.

It was always a part of a plan.

(tense music)

- That was the time
where they were beginning

to start expansion of Temple.

Ms. Gwen Moses, Ms. Gerry
Williams and Ms. Dot Brown,

they would be considered the
activists for this community.

By fighting Temple,
they put a stop to them.

That moment was a very powerful moment.

- Temple always give us,

I made made sure they gave us something.

- I feel as though they could
have helped out a great deal,

more so than what they did.

Far as us coming up as children,

they could have contributed
to our education.

- They ignored us!

They ignored us.

Like we didn't exist.

You know, nobody never came
with just the name Temple.

Nobody never showed their face or nothing.

- They told us that we
shoulda been getting

what we wasn't getting.

But I know the thing that we coulda got

and that we can get, we did get.

- Maybe they could offer
us some jobs. (laughing)

- I mean, this was all about Temple.

Things didn't go their
way, they call the police.

We're not doing anything.

We're just in our own neighborhood

and cops come around
here and they bother us.

Why?

With them coming around here,

just trying to take over things,

it was not fair to us.

- And they had talked about how

they were gonna tear down the houses.

It was hard because I was there

when that wrecking ball hit
the top of the building.

And that was like a punch in the stomach

'cause I knew that was the real
beginning of the end for us.

(melancholy guitar music)

- Wherever you at in Philadelphia,

you're gonna see a change.

Change is coming.

Now, is anybody running anybody out?

Well, that's up to the
individual to say that.

- If you have a situation
where you have vitality,

why not invest in that?

Why push that aside?

Why make that a situation

where people who have invested their lives

and invested community have
to just pick up and move?

- You can see where people are moving out

and it's becoming a university community.

It becomes hard because some of the people

were very elderly people

that had lived here for quite some years.

- My mama been here for a long time.

My mama's like the mother
of the neighborhood.

And then you take her away from that.

Ain't no time she died,

and when she died in a year,

she didn't know nobody
from where she was at.

Got lonely.

- Well, right now where I'm at,

not too happy with the neighborhood.

There's trouble everywhere you go,

but it's not safe for my child at all.

She's in the house all the time.

It's different from when she
can come out the back door

and we're here in the playground

and she has her friends.

Now all her friends are,

everybody's scared, everybody's separated.

Just right now,

we just making it
comfortable for where we at

until we can return.

- I'm really sorry they tearing it down.

I feel like part of me is
being torn away with it

and our children won't have
no idea where we came from.

And that's the hurt part.

- They took away our community.

This is where we were at.

This is where everything,

like we're out in the play right now,

and we had meetings, we had fun,

we meet up with everybody.

Everybody comes out, they sit around.

We can't do that anymore.

- I just hope and pray that
the people who lived here,

when they finish building the houses,

could come back and live in the houses.

(melancholy music)

- I mean, we still gonna be all right.

Because we built that family.

Ain't friends, we family now.

Some people just probably got in light,

but they from here.

So when I see them now, it's like, wow,

I run up to 'em and hug 'em and anything,

'cause we family,

no matter what anybody wants
to change and all that,

but now it's different.

We ain't about that no more.

We one now.

That's all we is, is one.

You from Norris, I'm from
Norris, and we family.

- It hurts 'cause you hate to
let go of those good memories,

and I'm not gonna be able to ride by

and remember the times and the places

and the things that we did.

- A lot of people (indistinct) though.

This is a lesson learned,
though. Lesson learned.

- But yeah, so the process of creating

and also, too, in terms
of community media-making,

I think sometimes (indistinct)

it's being done, it's community media.

So we don't need to work
with the best technology,

or we don't need to work
with the best craft,

but we all live in the
same media universe.

And so if a community
person makes something,

they're seeing Netflix,
they're seeing Amazon,

They're going to the multiplex.

So really making sure that the language

and the production values

are something that they respect

and that they can embrace.

So my take of community and photography

or community and time-based moving images

is letting the subjects have authorship

'cause that I learned so much more

about how people paint themselves
and describe themselves.

Your works, both of you,

you do gorgeous works.

And I learn from that,

but I also love how
people define themselves.

And that to me,

it gives me energy to actually...

it gives all of us information, really,

to make political change.

If people in a community say,

"No, we're not X,

we're not hoodlums,

but we are organizing

because we are young men

who are trying to create some
sort of order in our lives,"

and if that's how they define themselves,

then we begin to see them.

The rest of us,

those who are not in that community,

get to understand things differently.

So I really believe in participatory media

where the subjects have authorship.

- Absolutely.

I think the time right now is...

And also, especially for the artists,

for women, people of color

restructuring the narrative.

Today, I saw Anita Hill,

she just came out with a book.

And for me, Anita Hill was this woman,

people call her crazy,

but I saw her as this brave woman

who, in front of all these people,

including the President
of the United States

at this point right now, Joe Biden,

who told her story,

and she restructured
the narrative of abuse.

And all this stuff didn't register.

But I was like, "Wow,

she's up there saying that."

And this is years ago and she's
still fighting that fight.

So I think more and more
of that is taking place

and you all started

that in your practice

for people like me coming up,

'cause you always have to give props

and credit and love where
you learn, how you learn.

Those things influence me.

I was in a living room
with Kerry James Marshall

at my friend Dawoud Bey's house

and I didn't really make
that connection to Kerry.

And I was talking to
his wife, Cheryl Bruce.

And we were just talking about art

and that connection was

the influence from a lot
of those images I'm making

were those paintings being seen,

and you would see them in public spaces

just hanging up there.

Nobody knew who Kerry James Marshall.

So that's art, right? (chuckling)

That's the gift we're given.

We have that passport,

we have that luxury to
be able to tell stories.

So I am feeling that, I
think, more and more now.

But you all started the
foundation for my generation

and now there's another
generation of artists

coming up doing something different.

- And I think I learned
from your aesthetics.

I think you push the aesthetic boundaries

and really help us to make
good use of tools we have,

make better use of tools we have

by the way you see things.

I'm very appreciative of your work.

- Thank you.

And again,

it comes back to going back to Philly,

a place that influenced
me a lot at a young age.

I was 24 when I was living there.

Coming back to Philly and then teaching

at your temple, basically,

the place you started for young people,

again, it just comes in full circle.

So we're very close to each other.

It's a close-knit community,

even though sometimes it feels far away.

- I loved working in Philly (chuckling).

I think it was one of my favorite places.

- Yeah, Philly reminds me of Chicago too.

- Yes, and Detroit.

- Uh-huh, I know.

- Wendy did this incredible
project with Al-Bustan,

an Arab-American cultural
organization in Philadelphia,

that still stays with me.

Really pretty wonderful.

- Yeah, it was right before the election,

the Trump election,

and it felt so horrible,

and to work with Al-Bustan
in that situation

and to be able to say,
"Okay, what can we do?"

So we ended up working
with the young people,

making an immigrant alphabet that wrapped.

- It was a public art
piece and they extended it.

It was only supposed to be
there for a short amount of time

and then people said, "No, keep it up!"

And it was outdoors

around the municipal service building.

- Yeah, the municipal service building.

- Right near city hall.

A big deal.

- Yeah, yeah. No, it was great.

- And I'm curious.

I jumped into this thing
about social realism

and the practice of social realism

and the importance of it at
one point and it fell away.

I've been really inspired
by social realism,

that is where my work comes from,

I believe, right?

From the paintings,

from Charles White to Gordon Parks,

Dorothea Lang, it goes
on and on and on, right?

And I believe that it is alive, right?

I consider myself as an artist

in the practice of social realism,

but I was asking you when
you started talking about it,

'cause we started jumping into

how the art world kicked it out

and now coming back to it.

I wanna hear what you think.

- Well, you know, back in the day,

it was so lonely, for one thing.

This is so wonderful,

to be able to have these conversations.

It got easier in a sense

as we went on,

but I don't know if you
feel like this, Louis,

but as things changed
and we kept thinking,

"Oh, now people are gonna understand

what we're trying to say!"

and then it didn't happen.

And then another 10 years
would go by or whatever.

And now it's pretty interesting

because it has become something

that is accepted in the art world

in a way that it never
was accepted before,

I think,

and in a way that's
interesting and I'm grateful,

but I wonder what everybody needs.

- Yeah, in some ways,

I'm okay with it not being fully accepted

because accepted to me
means it's commodified,

and it means it's part of

the capitalist system,

as opposed to a tool to
help improve the society,

as opposed to being cultural work to,

how do we make this a
better place to live?

How do we make communities
self-determining?

How do we improve democracy?

That's something that

is not necessarily something
that's going to be...

We don't want that commodified.

The value of that

is in its direct relationship

to changing the culture.

- And I also think it can
be aesthetically directed

without being commodified,
if that makes sense.

I think it's as important

to push the boundaries aesthetically

in this way as well as politically.

They're both interesting.

- Yes. I'm not an anti-aestheticist.

- (laughing) I'm not saying anybody is,

but that's something that
bothers me sometimes,

is that it gets pigeonholed in some ways.

And that's why I love looking, Carlos,

at your black and white Polaroid pictures

and the way that they are
constructed is different.

And that's important.

That comes from who you are

and what you're trying to say.

But I think sometimes

that people

see things in terms of,

well, of poverty for one thing

and how it's the aesthetic
that you put into it

that lifts it out of what
can be stereotypical.

Know what I mean?

- Sorry.

It's what we were talking about,

reshaping the narrative of
how we tell stories, right?

How we take that narrative
and make it our own

and then put it back into the world.

So I think this period that we're in,

it is actually really
challenging us, right?

Because the last administration
really brought out

those questions,

and I think having
evidence of these issues

that exist before

into the present moment,

I think really helped
show that we're here.

George Floyd is real, Mike Brown is real.

And then all these other young people

that have been in that space for years.

We can talk about Detroit, right?

And this is nothing new,

but it goes in waves, right.

So you gotta be ready for it (chuckling).

When it comes our way,

how do we deal with it?

I was dealing with it before,

and then when it came last summer,

actually, my child was sick.

So I had to take care of my child

and I was sitting at home

and my thing was, "I can't
be out in the streets.

I gotta be here nurturing this young boy

to be well."

So that was a real challenge.

My work was over.

Time said, "Hey, stop. Be here."

And he's good, he's doing great.

But it was just that challenge,

witnessing all these moments in history,

but history doesn't
work that way, I think.

I think we're left with the aftermath,

the before and the after of community

and not the reactions sometimes,

and it's hard to accept that,

putting yourself in that thinking box,

in that place.

How do we tell the next thing

for the next generation to come?

How do we deal with that and address it

because it goes away

and people get distracted.

There's no COVID or there's no pandemic

that's isolating everybody
into the same space.

And I think last year
we were in that world.

We're still in it. It hasn't gone away.

But that isolation
really made people focus.

Interesting time, right, to
be an artist or to reflect?

- I'm curious, both Carlos and Wendy,

do you have go-to places
to share your work?

That is,

are there regular venues

that you share your work

and that allow you to
engage with the communities

that you work with?

- You wanna go, Wendy?

- Well, I was just gonna say,

that's one of the reasons why I'm very...

No, not a lot of times.

And that's one of the
reasons why I'm excited about

making a space

out of Centro Romero

that is contributing

in terms of

showing, exhibiting, and
teaching and whatever.

But I think that's hard for me.

My life has really been
going from places to places.

I've been working in Tanzania

for 10 years or 11 years now
with the university there.

And so in a way that is a community for me

because we're evolving
together, the professors and I,

and creating this thing that's there.

So I guess for me, the work itself

is where I can do that
or how I can do that.

- For me, I think the
space has always changed

and I think that's the
privilege and the luck I've had

from actually going to a gallery space,

to a film festival

or a setting where you're showing

eighth graders' work to collections.

It's this gamut.

And then obviously the
online portals that we have.

I've just had that luck, I guess,

or I forced it to happen as well.

I remember one time I had a film

at the Milwaukee Film Festival

and this woman said to me,

"These films don't come to our community.

And the audience is all white,

which is beautiful because
they're supporting film,

but also there's this connection

of people who would never
see a film like this

outside of my community."

So I think that's the most
important part of being an artist

is being able to take

our work into different places

and connect with all kinds
of folks that are interested.

I think that the space has changed.

I know you weren't asking me

which is my favorite space,

but I would say it's the community hub,

the places created by
people like you and Wendy,

the invitation,

and sometimes you can't
make all those invitations

'cause you have to work and
create and pay the bills.

But sometimes they all come
together and it happens.

So that's a great question.

How about you? (chuckling)

- What about you?

- I'm really conscious of trying to,

and I don't succeed a lot at the time,

but I'm really conscious
of trying to assess

what are the institutions that are there.

And they may not be the
usual cast of characters

and they may not be 501(c)(3),

they may not be funded by X, Y and Z,

but what are institutions that are there

that can allow for me,

'cause I get so much out of
the conversation with the work.

Yes, you want works to be seen

by a lot of different
eyeballs on the screen,

but there's something really powerful

when you can actually connect with people

that see a film

or you can be in conversation with folks,

because I learned as much...

I learned more than, probably,

the person who was watching the film.

And I'm just thinking
about this in terms of,

do you know the...

She's a filmmaker, a gallery impresario?

She really was probably one of...

Linda Goode Bryant.

She created this gallery in Manhattan.

She was 22 or 23.

She'd just graduated
from Spelman and decided,

this is in the '60s,

that she was gonna start a gallery.

And she just created Just
Above Midtown gallery

and folks like David
Hammons and Betye Saar

worked there.

But she's somebody who throughout her life

has really created institutions,

realizing that part of
a cultural practice,

one strategy in a cultural practice

is either connecting
yourself to an institution

or recognizing an institution

or building an institution.

So I was just wondering.

Just putting that out there.

- Now, too, I've been
having that relationship

with the Museum of Contemporary
Photography in Chicago.

- And I'm thinking about
peoples as opposed to corporate.

- Yeah, yeah.

It became where,

I put my work in a portfolio review thing,

but then the students from the city

'cause I went to school there,

the places where my friends came to,

the only real art school,

I'm not talking about the
artists (indistinct) or not.

A place where a lot of
the city kids came to,

they were looking at it

and then the people in
the Institute were like,

"Hey, can we get your work?"

And so that connection
was made at that level.

The other connections were
made, again, in community hubs.

It's an interesting place to also push

a museum such as MOCP to
ask them the tough questions

of how do they approach
community, you know?

And they've really changed

that path to doing that

in the past

four or five years.

They're really making that connection.

So I also think we have to
challenge the institutes

to bring that work,

to think about the curators
and think about that work.

And in those curators come up too.

They change it.

So there's curators that
will change an institute

just being in the inside.

So I think that happens.

It has to happen in
these institutes as well.

It's happening more and more.

Look at the platform.

Where are we having this conversation?

- Yeah, I started a gallery in London

when I was in college,

and there was only one
other photography gallery

in England.

And that was just because...

It wasn't just because,

it was something I'd always wanted to do,

but my husband at the time
was working in a theater

which was one of the
first fringe theaters.

And we were all squatting (laughing).

Very picturesque,

but it gave us all this freedom.

And I made the gallery space

and we had the theater and there
was incredible productions.

- What was the name of the gallery?

- The Half Moon Gallery.

It still exists, which
is really weird too.

I just think a lot of it is timing,

of just fortunately having the opportunity

to be in that time and that space

and realizing, let's
just try this and see.

So I feel like I've been really fortunate

just to be able to follow those
things or think about them,

and do them with no money.

- So the clock is...

- I know, we're almost out!

- I wanna know, what are you working on?

Both of you.

What are you in the middle of?

- I'm in the middle of
really figuring out,

it takes a while to things out,

but I'm in the middle of figuring out

how to tell these stories
of environmental racism

in Black and brown communities.

To me it's the forefront of
obviously where you live,

the landscape you live in,

but also a form of violence, you know?

So I'm just trying to figure that out

without spewing out that word "violence."

I'm trying to figure that out.

So I have a National
Geographic Explorer grant,

which is interesting.

They look at all types of folks

from filmmakers to people like me

whose work is multi-practice.

So yeah, I got this grant from Geographic

to explore and work

and look at Black and brown communities

and talk about environmental racism.

So I'm working on that.

- Wow, that's important work.

Wow.

- I'll need guidance (chuckling).

- (chuckling) I need guidance too.

I'm doing something
for National Geographic

with four freedoms.

- Interesting. Really?

- About my community that I grew up in

and the other community
that I was attached to,

which was a community
of heavyweight boxers

that my father managed.

- Where did you grow up, Wendy?

- I was born in Detroit

and then we moved to Grosse Point.

- Brother Louis, what's up?

Tell us, what are you working on?

- So I'm behind,

but I've been working on this documentary

about Toni Cade Bambara,

and it's truly a primer
on how one uses culture

as a way of organizing communities.

So it's various people
telling stories about Toni,

but they're really lessons

on cultural organizing as a
way of strengthening community.

So I thought I was near finished shooting,

but I need a little bit more to do.

And there's a wonderful
editor, Monica Enriquez,

who I've been working with.

It will be done sooner rather than later.

- I wish you luck.
- What are the communities

you're working in?

- With that film or with...
- The film, sorry.

- What?

- With the film.
- The film.

- So Tony's particular focus was,

I would say, African
diasporic communities,

women, down-pressed people broadly.

So those are all part of the audience

that the film is for,

that will be useful to them.

To us, I should say.

- Thank you. It was just a
real privilege being here.

- Yeah, it was great..

- We're gonna sign off.

For the people, thank you for your time,

for tuning in and being with us.

- Yeah, thank you.