Karla In Blue | Havana, Cuba, c.2014 | 16” x 24” Color Photograph
April 17, 2014.
At the time of this photograph, we’d been in Cuba for about five or six days. A few days living like beach bums on the shore of Varadero, and now on our third day in an old, midcentury modern styled casa particular that we found in Havana. I assumed we would be heading home the following day, but as it turned out, I’d never actually read our itinerary. Duh!
The Crucifix | c.2017 | Black and White Photograph
Two buses came and went, and they never looked up, and no one took notice. Save for the turn of a page, nothing moved. Face obscured by a weathered and worn book with no title or text of any kind on the cover. Bible?
Read MoreThe Water Dance | Photographed c.2014 | Crown Fountain | Millennium Park, Chicago
Five fearless Black girls, one of which is my daughter. Brown Ballerinas and classically trained anomalies of whom I’d been making photographs in the streets and along railroad tracks and in front of murals for the better part of the day
Read MoreBlack in the Absence of Light | Color Photograph, c.2022
A Black teenager rides a bicycle while chatting on his cellphone. He casts a perfect silhouette against a brightly graffitied, abandoned building. There are no identifiable features, nothing distinct… a cardboard cutout in the shape of a human being. Rolling by on two wheels - this metaphor for what it often means to be Black in these United States.
Read MoreGrenada, Mississippi. Land of my ancestors.
I traveled here to the birthplace of my mother. A celebration of the life and passing of the last great matriarch of the Applewhite clan…
Oba Maja | May 1944 - October 2015 | Photographed July 2015 | North Milwaukee Avenue | Wicker Park, Chicago
*According to his brother, the greenish-yellow color of Oba Maja’s eyes was due to his illness. When I converted the image to B/W, I left the eyes untouched.
Monday afternoon, driving north on Milwaukee Ave through Wicker Park:
“Poetry! Poems! Poetry! Poems!” As happens so often, I am intrigued. I make a u-turn and add yet another traffic violation to my daily meanderings.
