There Are Some Rivers: 2021 Media That Shape My Media

Happy new year beautiful people!

So… reading is one of my love languages. I sincerely believe that if I love something or someone, I have to make the commitment to knowing them and doing right by them as long as I have breath in my body. I’m big on political education for myself. If I was a photographer that only read photography (and/or business) books, my vision would be very different. I use reading/studying to further develop the why, what, how and where I do what I do behind the camera.

Getting back to using this platform more in 2022. This is the year where I fully embrace my work as a Pan-Africanist photographer and artist moving forward. That part - Pan-African - is of particular importance to me. If you really want to understand the worldview and intent that comes through my lens, you have to swim in that river.

With that, here are some pathways to understanding my work. Here are books things I finished in 2021:

One Thing Visual (Highly Recommended:

• Blacklash: The Africana Collective - I treated each of these sessions like classes. I’d recommend you do too. Still looking for a friend (or a few! to go through these with me and have some discussions) .I don’t even know where to begin in discussions about this series (that I really hope returns!). To me everyone in this collective is worthy of exhaustive praise in their own right. I’ve learned so much from each of them. To learn from them all together offer was one of the richest experiences of these last 18 months.

Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro

• Great introduction to Fidel for those who aren’t familiar. I enjoyed every page. I learned how incredibly brilliant and courageous this dude was. Viva Fidel Favorite Speech was entitled ‘Defeating Neoliberalism Will Allow for Hope in the Future’.

Black Awakening in Capitalist America - Robert Allen

• Most important book I read in 2021 on the U.S., I’d recommend this book to everyone who’d like to understand how we are where we are socially, politically and culturally in this moment.

Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups and Assassination - Vijay Prashad

• The more I read Vijay’s writing, the more I appreciate his scholarship, activism and tenacity. He knows his shit! First encountered him years ago seeing the cover of his book ‘The Darker Nations: a people's history of the 3rd world. I haven’t read it yet (lol) but plan to sometime soon. I first really go into his writing via The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. I def recommend you go there.

Black Power in Bermuda: The Struggle for Decolonization - Quito Swan

• I def need to spend moor tyme with this cat. If I were a historian, I’d like to imagine I’d be in the tradition of people like Quito. Reading this really opened my eyes to movement history in the Caribbean. Names. figures, places and moments that hadn’t previously registered in my mind. It’s a treasure trove of meticulous research (the sources!) really helped me how specific and common apartheid states are in imperialist exploitation.

Transatlantic Africa - Kwasi Konadu

• Read this in for my book club. I wasn’t more personally affected by any book this year than with this one. I can’t recommend this book enough. The way Kwasi writes as a historian moves me in the same way reading Ayi Kwei Armah’ s 2000 Seasons’ did. You’ll learn so much from this one. This was my first read of his work and will def not be the last (see below). Spent some great mornings in New Orleans in May reading this at Congregation Coffee Roasters.

Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary - Gearld Horne

• I’ve heard Dr. Horne reference Robeson as ‘The Tallest Tree in Our Forest’. I’ve been familiar with Robeson for a long time thanks to my mom and read ‘Here I Stand’ back in 2020. One of the best ways to understand the era of the ‘Red (and Black - Shout out to Dr. CBS!) Scare’ is through following Robeson. Horne currently is the tallest tree in our forest as far as historians go. Seriously, read anything by him. He’s essential reading.

Dawoud Bey On Photographing People and Communities - Aperture Foundation

• Great book on relationship-making with space(s) and people(s). Dawoud is a living legend and direct influence on my photographer work (see more on that here).

Race After Technology - Ruha Benjamin

• Book Club Read - Wonderful way to see how the contours of modern capitalism at best is pro-profit and anti-people. She also shows how this ain’t no new thang. Ruha makes it abundantly clear that the algorithms ain’t gonna save us ya’ll. Organizing is. Would come to different conclusions on some things based on the data given, but really got a good frame for this digital moment.

(Reread) The Spirit of Intimacy - Sobonfu Some

• Book Club Read - Important to remember the context (time and era) that this piece was written in. Sobunfu drops gems of timeless brilliance and wisdom mixed in with broad generalizations (consistent with the era) that left me underwhelmed in the ‘Africa is a country’ kind-of-way. It was helpful to consider how her writing could help in an organizing context. Would def recommend as a conversation-starter for how create healing spaces for authentic communication and relationship building.

(Reread) Imixwhatilike: A Mixtape Manifesto - Jared Ball

• Probably the book I recommend most when people ask me ‘What should I read?”. It’s available for free on his site here. Also, make sure you go peep Black Power Media

Here are books I started in 2021 (and intend to finish lol)

• Current Read: Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice - Quito Swan*

• Current Read for Book Club: Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor*

• Mydas - Jon Goode

  • This is def my favorite read from 2021, it was so good I couldn’t finish it. Incredible writing by an author im glad to know,

• Open Veins of Latin America - Eduardo Galeano

• The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960’s Chicago - Abdul Alkalimat, Rebecca Zorach, Romi Crawford

• Empire of Borders - Todd Miller

• Our Own Way in this Part of the World - Kwasi Konadu

• Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness + Schooling in San Franciso - Savannah Shange

• The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save our Earth - The Red Nation

Looking forward to reading (not exhaustive):

• Black Scare/Red Scare: Antiblackness, Anticommunism, and the Rise of Capitalism in the United States by Cherisse Burden-Stelly (Coming 2022)

• Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-colonialism, and the African World - Quito Swan (Coming 2022)

• Epistemologies of the South - Boaventura de Sousa Santos

What ya’ll reading? Leave comments below!

Through Shared Black Eyes Interview w/ a gathering together

Long time no chat beautiful people!

The good folks over at ‘a gathering together’ interviewed me about my work. Please take a look!

You can find the interview here.

about agt:

A Gathering Together is a journal that resists the easy and often unsophisticated attempt to say profound things in the moment, without deep contemplation, or in the heat of discursive battle. Building upon John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie’s words, we seek to build a place that cultivates and discusses improvised acts of taking ourselves from here to there. We publish works that simultaneously transcend and address the moment they speak from, works that will last beyond the creator’s last breath and still be relevant, and/or works that put the writer and reader in conversation with the intellectual thought of Ancestors of all kinds. In the end, we offer a gathering of works that endure and elevate us to a space of inquiry and move us toward resolution of not only the challenges that mark our lives but also those that can no longer be our realities.