Frank Stewart's Nexus Opening Lecture with Frank Stewart and Fred Moten

[Applause] I heard Fred say one time that now we have to we have to live up to the introductions well um thank you so much Aaron um it's it's a pleasure to be here it's my first time in Savannah I promise it won't be the last you got some just to come down here for lunch you know but um but um maybe maybe maybe a great place to start is just maybe you could say a little bit more about your connection to the city and and and and how it how it operates within the this sort of amazing itinerary of your career well I have to blame Rob Gibson for bringing me down here what is it 25 years ago Rob he said man can you come down here uh and take some pictures for us uh music festival down here yeah man I come down there we don't have much money I'll pay you to come down here so yeah I've had it's been an amazing run for 25 years and taken some great photographs and met some great people a lot of great people I'm still meeting them and uh it's been my pleasure to come here I look forward to coming here all for a year you know just be around sitting around on the benches in foresight Park looking at all the crazy people that come through there on Saturday you know so yeah thank you guys for having me how I wanted to ask you just because again listen the erand so Nashville Memphis Chicago uh New York you know Cuba how I I guess you know we have this image in our heads of of the sort of traveling journalistic photog photographer you know with with the camera around his neck going from Battleground to Battleground but but but how how important has travel been not only in the after the in the aftermath of your you know really becoming a professional photographer if that's the right word but also because I always wonder if it's right to ever think about professional in relation to artists that's why I said it but but also even the the the movements that you made you know growing up in childhood and Adolescence how much has all of that movement shaped the work that you do well it's all interrelated you know those those cities that you named uh Memphis and Chicago those are two blue cities so I grew up GRE up basically in the Blues you know in uh Memphis you know the blues was everywhere you could go to beill Street and see all these famous people still famous playing on the streets so and then there was a um a radio station black radio station called WD and they played R&B in the daytime but they played Blues all night you know Sundays they play gospel so that station was on all the time it like 247 so I got to hear a lot of good music and then I had a a stepfather who was a jazz musician Phineas newborn Jr and he's the actually the one that brought me to uh New York uh to play with count Bassy play opposite count Bassy at Birdland so when I was like seven eight nine I was hanging out in the in the uh clubs and uh all of that painted my my existence in in in the Arts and the culture and it was all important you know going from one culture to the next they were distinct cultures like Memphis was different than Chicago and New York was definitely different than both of them so it was good to see the difference at an early age too when I think about travel uh growing up in the segregated South you know you you kind of you kind of mired you stuck you know so I always wanted to know where this culture came from the origins of it what made it such a great culture and I early in the game I wanted to go to West Africa where the slaves came from just to find out what importantance the drum was to the C that culture and I found out that the drum was everything you know it was in every part of their existence their light their their home their courts their schools you know the drum you heard the drums in the morning to go to school you heard him when lunchtime came and you heard when school was over somebody was playing the drums to let you know and the Court's the same way uh when the king comes in he's got his drummers behind him they were Royal drummers in the court and they were talking to him they were telling him you're the king now they're going to be Kings after you so watch what you do and watch what you say and his drummers were cosigning that that's right that's right that's that's right you know they had the talking drums and uh all of that was important to to to witness that's why they took the drum from the slaves except in New Orleans because people understood what the tones were drum was a tone of language so uh I wanted to see how the music was made in Africa and then how it got cified in the Caribbean so that was my foray into uh Cuba and the Cuban beat because uh jelly Ro Martin said you didn't have the blues unless it had a a Spanish tins to it so we went to Cuba just to see what that Spanish tins was and how it got Incorporated in the music and what happened to it had it got cified in uh New Orleans too when it came to New Orleans so all of this plays into what I've been doing all these years I always love that term Spanish tinge because tinge is it's like a I usually associate that term with with with the visual you see a tinge so it's it's amazing that a musician would have to make an appeal to a visual term in order to talk about what's essential in the music and it it raises this question of what the relationship is between Sight and Sound like and it's playing out so beautifully in the show there's a section called chromatic music and it's like how you know chromatic also being a term to keep shifting back and forth between music and and the visual how so when you said those are Blues cities it made me want to ask like are you a blues photographer can there be a blues photographer that's like saying are you a jazz photographer know I keep telling look I'm not a jazz photograph I'm just a photographer you know they want to Pigeon ho you yeah uh a blues photographer no I'm not a blues photographer but I'm a Blues listener I listen to the blues all the time you know mudy W is like a hero and growing up in Chicago you could see these guys you know they were still living they you know Muddy Waters had his Cadillac so you can see you knew that's Muddy Waters going through the neighborhood you know stuff like that so those were my heroes growing up you know Blues musicians how and wolf you know all these cats so uh yeah I'm sure there's a correlation there I don't know that you actually think about the correlation until much later than uh when it's happening it's just happening you know in your life when you're walking around you you talking to your family members and you constantly hearing this sound on the radio so it's not that you dissecting it with them but they're telling you about it you know I had an uncle that uh turned me on the Jazz his his name was Robert he was kind of crazy he came from the Korean War I think he was affected so he turned me on to Charlie Parker Charlie Parker was strings was the first album I heard so he knew I was going to New York with Phineas so he said man you gonna see all these cats you know you going to see dizzy and you going to see bird and you going to see miles and this that and he would go into character to tell me what they were like you know but he would go into their character and uh he was a show you know so that was a show okay you have to forgive me everybody but can I argue with you just a little just a little because because I want to make an argument this this is horrible I'm G to make an argument for you as a Blues photographer in this in this way all right I'll be if you want me to be I'll be a Blu time because when you were talking about travel and movement and and you know usually in the history with you know part of what it means to be black in the United States is that you come out of a history of displacement and that displacement often never seems to end always on the Move we we're we're itinerate which which doesn't militate against the fact that we are also stuck so what does it mean to be stuck and moving all the time and and how does that play itself out in in the art forms that we produce the blues as a form is is a simple relatively static form that produces all this variety and movement and constant disruption and displacement within that form and and Jazz T takes off from that and and your your photographs move there's movement in those photographs and and and so what it and blues musicians are these itinerate technicians right like they they there's just nothing that they don't know about the instruments that they use including their voice just like it doesn't feel like there's anything that you don't know about light and the camera and how those two things can be made to work together and and so for me to say you're a blue St it's not a pigeon hole at I mean I know other people might be trying to pigeon hole you when when they say that but to me that's like this extraordinarily expansive formulation right well the thing about it is like Robert Johnson was like you say he moved around you know but he he moved up and down the Mississippi River and he sang about it you know it was part of his whole o you know to sing about his experiences in a blues form and and I'm kind of in the Duke Ellington uh vernacular of dressing the blues up in this finest uh finest clothes you know that's what his that's what he said he did I dressed the blues up and and it's finest uh attire so that's what I try to do in the photographs I try to dress the blues up because we are Blues people you know uh who was that uh Baraka that said that Blues people and um I'm constantly trying to show the best like Roy Dei you know he the first time I saw him it was the first time I seen a photographer shoot with that kind of empathy for the people he loved and I'm I'm trying to do that as well in music and in just the people I shoot so I was thinking about that word a lot empathy CU kind of it's in a it's kind of in ill repute these days amongst the folks that I find myself with a lot you know sort of a lot of academics try to outsmart themselves out of empathy you know and and for a whole bunch of good reasons right because the notion is that empathy is just usually this notion of it being away away for the person who feels empathy to make themselves feel better without doing anything to make the folks who are suffering feel feel better right but um but it strikes me that empathy is of a of another order than that and and it kind of has to do with how the photographer not only seems to be in the photograph but also invites us to be in the photograph and we were thinking about talking about this a little bit earlier with regard to space and the difference between Photography in general and your Photography in particular say like Renaissance painting and how how you make space how you hold space how you how you break space what does does any how does that have to do or does it have to do with empathy uh I think you can attach empathy to the medium itself you know you can love the medium like a painter loves the paint sculptor loves to sculpt photographer loves to take pictures you know I mean there's the empathy there to uh go out and try to find a a a great image you know there three things in photography great images take into consideration the first is composition the next is uh the photographer and the other is uh how the how the the form is balanced with the space so yeah there's there's a lot of empathy there form balance with this B there's moments was about four or five slides back with the young men just on the street and I when there's moments when I'm going through the gallery and I really feel like uh it's not just that I feel like oh I've been in a scene like that before or I've seen folks like that I know those folks there there's that too but it's also this feeling like I'm in that photograph like I'm in in it like the space this is that what's on the wall has embraced me in a way and I'm there with that you know and I and so I feel those folks you know I feel their presence you know it's like uh Rothco this this collector was asking Rothco you know well how did you feel when you painted this and rco you know he didn't he didn't want to answer to you know he kept asking him so he said okay so when I'm painting this you know I might be sad you know when I paint this I hope that the people that come to see it understand that I'm said and they bring their experiences to this painting like I brought my experience to the painting and we meet in the middle somewhere and that's basically what I'm trying to do in photography I'm trying to I've had all these experiences and I I I hope that the person that comes to see the photograph understands and brings their experiences to understand what they're looking at so in that respect yes well um there's a great I hope I'm answering these questions like you you you know you such a heavy cat man you know I don't I don't want to not be answering you know to your qualification it's all good I for me it's all good I don't know about y'all but I'm I'm all right okay okay okay okay uh oh I remember the first time um I feel like this is the third time that I've seen this show now I didn't see it in Naples Ines but I saw it in the Phillips but the first time was actually in Ruth F's apartment oh right right right right and uh it was a little slightly unedited right and and Ruth is a extraordinary lovely person who for some reason wants to keep giving me credit for co-curating this but it's not true you know it's really not true well even if you just cosign what she said you know that that's that's curating to her that was the easiest possible thing to do but but I remember it's it what's extraordinary is it's been going in this sort of way in which the space within which the photographs are seen is expanded so her you know she got like know one two-bedroom apartment and all of these images and a whole lot more were in apartment Phillips is a lot smaller than this Gallery right but what's kind of extraordinary to me is that the the the photographs the images seem at home in all those spaces they work in all those spaces I don't even have a good question other than how how do you do that well the thing is you know we had she had so many images to choose from the stuff that didn't go in the show is a whole another show you know so they they're all on kind of the same order um I mean it just you know after a while the show lives for itself it's like birthing a baby or something you know you know after a while you have to leave it alone and let it just live and breathe on its own so that's kind of how it got organized there's this there's a there's a great short story by Alice Walker called Everyday Use and it's really it's about a kind of family dispute around a quilt and you now some folks you know people you know obviously long long history black women making beautiful quilts and and over the course of the last 25 or 30 years you know the quilts have been recognized as works of art um it's just that the quilts were made to be used every day which is to say they were they were made ultimately to they were made both to pass down and also to Decay to fall apart they had to fall apart underneath the hands of the people who were using them and I guess what I'm saying is like these photographs are for me it are for every day like in other words they felt at home in Ruth's home because they feel like family photographs and they feel at home in these galleries because they absolutely also feel like works of art yeah it's funny you say something about quilts you know I was growing up in you know in the in the culture of African-Americans basically definitely in rural areas and in Memphis place like Memphis everybody had a quilt MH and you know the material was left from you know old clothes or overhauls or gabardines or this or that you know they put in a bag and then they brought out to make this quilt and everybody oh this was Uncle John's this was Sunny's uh shirt and this was that one this was that baby's uh blanket you know so when you have a quilt like that you're living you you're living with those people too and um I had the pleasure of going to G's Benin once you know you know G's Ben you guys know about G's Ben quilts I mean they just fantastic I went there to find this lady uh is a German name uh bergund off or something like that but I saw a print by hers and they said well she's from GB and I didn't know anything about GB so I looked it up and all this incredible stuff and I found her mother and she had all of this this there's a whole thing in G's beenin about these women that make these quilts and they go around the world I didn't have enough money at the time to buy it but I was there and I met them and I was just blown away by what they can do yeah and how they it it comes right out of Africa too you know all that stuff was uh positioned the way the place was position you know it was just stuck those people were stuck after slavery and they just kept making these quilts yeah it's like a it's like like an archive that keeps you warm yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you're living with those people and I was I was thinking too um you know the the one of the other cool things that you know it's just to just to say I've always been one of those Museum go like I I go through quick you know like I don't linger feel like I you know because I think I just get overwhelmed you know and I need to to take a break you know um yeah but you log everything in your memory you know I do when I go to museums I go I'm the same way I go in Fast and I look at everything but I log you know some things I stay for a while though and then and then and then you get to go back then you can go back if you want to and I and what I noticed going back this time was something that was especially happening I mean well it happens in all of them now to me but I was feeling like um I felt like I was getting a much Fuller richer sense of of a kind of relation between your photography and painting not that you're trying to do what painting does because you don't have to but but rather because there were certain ways in which like um like in the I think if you can see it in all of these but but you could really see it like in the one for me with the with the the bus the the tour bus so there's this like kind of beautiful sort of swath of red at the bottom which is the color of the bus and you see these faces but what you see is almost like this kind of collage effect or you know well that's on purpose in that photograph you know I'm trying to abstract the form like I think is going into anyway but it still has to be a photograph yeah so I'm trying to give you a pigment coming into each other and but I want to give you an XM MOX spot so I put in people recognizable forms and oh okay that's a person right there it's not just a abstract feeling but there's a person right there and people people identify with that they don't really I don't know how much they identify with the rest of the photograph but oh there's a person there you know so I'm trying to abstract the form but still give you a person so it's a it's still a photograph yeah and you're right about all that it's so much it's so much detail you know it's like there's this one experience where you stand five minutes and look you get a sense of the overall composition you come back next week and you see something in the corner you know or like Aaron was pointing out oh there's Frank's reflection right in in in the bell of the horn you know I didn't see that you know and it's like um I it makes me one there's that formulation that the the photograph changes it moves and obviously what changes is that we see it differently things aspects of it that weren't there or it seem as if they weren't there before all of a sudden they're there they're they're they're they're present and it so it makes it just kind of cool thing because you you go and see the photograph a couple times and it changes and you realize that you you've changed too as a viewer well a good example of that is that uh St Patrick's Day Parade where it just looks I really wanted it to look like just paint you know just dabbled on like something like uh Jackson poock may have done dabble D but in that paint you see all these soldiers marching you know and you don't see that unless you get up on it so from a distance it just looks like paint dabs you know like a pallet knife and you you've done a pallet knife painting so you have to along with what you're saying you have to get up on it to see what's in the middle of those blossoms on the tree see that I love the the philosophical technical specificity of black speech black speech up on it that's a technical ter you you got to get up on it yeah you know I hey look I came from when I came to New York I I spoke like I came right out of the alley in Memphis you know and people didn't know what I was talking about you know it was a whole another vernacular it was it was colloquial and it's like uh you said you just as well too like where I came from was you know it got but but look art historical language you know there big old book from John to critical terms for art historical study they ain't got all up in it in there you're right Ain all up in there they ain't all over and and art history suffers from this condition you know and um there's another all up in it all up in it yeah yeah yeah right and I I actually think there's certain moments where you know it it moves from up on it to all up in it all up in it yeah yeah yeah yeah so you been you've been dabbling huh yeah yeah and I I was thinking about it today too because I was like you now you go through the museum and usually maybe I don't know why I noticed it so distinctly today but I kept seeing a little sign please do not touch you'll see and I was like usually I imagine they all they they usually have that or they have like a little line but but I realize you have to tell people please do not touch with your stuff because people want to touch it you invite touch get in there right and which is to say that you know we start off talking about um you know this relation between Sound and Music and and your work and then there's this question of movement even a kind of choreography a kind of dancing that occurs to me me in the work and sometimes like in the juneth photo which I think is my favorite one people are dancing you should have told me I would have I would have given you that one that's my that's my I don't you don't have to it's Imp in there but uh but then there's also this kind of tactile element there's it's it's an amazing thing to me that a that a medium which is so specifically visual it's still your in your work all the senses are activated that's hard to do you know so yeah you have to practice that and you got to be thinking about it so I'm always thinking about the media you know and it's in my head all the time so even if I don't have a camera I'm taking pictures all the time damn that looks like a picture I wish I had my camera okay so okay well to today um I feel feel really lucky cuz the last I was saying before I've had this experience of being able to visit Studios of artists that I admire and also talk with folks you know read them talking about their practice and it makes it feel like studio is really a Sacred Space um like kind of more like church than church is half the time you know and at the same time it's also like a a mechanic's garage or you know and and I was thinking about how so I was asking about the studio and obviously the dark room but when you said just now that you're taking pictures all the time it's like you just bring the studio with you yeah bring the studio you know wherever I am there's a studio that's the studio uh it's a class too you know wherever I am it's a class I'm breaking up space you know just automatic now where in the beginning you had to really I mean it's like a musician doing chords you know in the be you got to learn how to play your cords but now after you learn you know you it comes naturally so yeah same thing one of my favorite musicians actually great classical pianist named Glenn ghoul oh yeah bad dude there's his there's his he had some issues though he had issues I mean if you got deep you probably got to have I mean it just comes with the territory but he monk bur pal all these had some issues but he he talks about he had this breakthrough when he was like 11 he was practicing a piano and they had a lady who would clean the house and she really didn't care about him practicing so she would come in vacuuming while he was trying to practice and he said and he had his breakthrough with the piano was when he couldn't hear he himself play wow wow right it was and and all of a sudden it was it was about this relationship to the instrument that had transcended you know the specific you know sort of sense that it was supposed to be connected to so when you're up in here moving space you know it's like I'm still I still have a camera but I got a nice story like what you're saying and my stepfather had issues you know he had a lot of nervous breakdown and he was in bellevie a few times and one time he was in bellw uh he was playing the piano all the that's all he wanted to do was play the piano so he took the piano from him so a friend of his came and brought him just a diagram of a keyboard and he played that all the time so yeah you're right you don't you don't even need the instrument anymore you because it's all up in here yeah it actually reminds me of the story I heard great pianist Randy Weston tell about uh about the lonus monk he said uh monk was uh he met monk at a club one night and said Mr Monk I really want to study with you I really want to talk with you about you know Harmony and these cords and everything so Mon's like okay come by the house so he gets up early one morning goes to Monk's apartment um and monk is sitting on the couch and he just sat on the couch next to monk didn't say anything monk didn't say anything time passed got to be about 6 o' in even he says well well Mr Monk I guess I better go monk was like okay good come back tomorrow he said and Brandy W said and at that he said and later I realized that he was a Sufi Master he could teach without talking well you know what he didn't play is just as important as what he played yeah yeah right right right there's a lot of stories about monk all kind of guys have told me stories about Monk so I'm about to lose track of time and I don't I don't know what where we are at but I know we want to have Q&A some Q&A yeah Q&A anybody got questions out there yes sir Mr Mr M Jason oh I want you to know that I'm taking the whole fr when I put the black border around it I did that early in the career uh you know people would tell telling me yeah but you got to crop this you got to crop that it's like Roy crop and his Mantra was if it's not in there take it out you know so my mantras is if you can't work it out work it in you know so uh yeah so I I I crop in my head so when I'm taking a picture is already I already know what's going to be in the frame and that's why I put that black border around it I wish I could do it in color too but I don't I don't have I have any say so about printing the color oh yeah I mean that's that's a conscious effort you know if it's in the photograph it's a conscious effort if it's blurry I'm trying to make it blurry so so that it uh I emphasized the the uh composition better you know the subject matter matter better with the blurring the background you know so that's all a conscious effort yeah but it's done automatically now you know I don't have to think that much about it it you know it comes into play and then you notice that it's something to be taken a picture of and that happens very quickly sometimes it happens and you don't take the picture and a couple of seconds go by and you damn that was a picture you know you know and you see it in your mind you're still seeing it in your mind and then you that was a picture you know a good one so that happens too the two of you talked a lot different forms of Art and they that's all I'm trying to do is capture a narrative you know I'm trying to tell a story all the time you know and I think those are the best photographs that do tell stories that's definitely we haven't spoken enough to be real clear about it we need to speak some more we need one of these sessions he he's his time is very uh taken up by all the stuff he does I well I'm thinking of one one thing I in particular that was um there's a great uh photographed by Roy D carava called son and shade and uh two little kids playing he found this amazing I mean he saw he saw the composition he saw the picture and there's a kind of great sort of diagonal line that you know that creates this s you know dividing line between what's in the sun and the shade and the two kids are playing on either side dividing line and it's it's a I mean it's just like a kind of I mean one of the things about it that I think is probably a I feel like it's clearly the case with regard to I feel like it's it's a fundamental thing in art you know um it it just doesn't care about the distinction between abstraction and figuration just doesn't even care everything that you could imagine or want from abstraction it has that and it has the other too and and I don't and I think that most of the you know the stuff that we love it be you know it's it's in that it's in that place but um and then at a certain point you know you're just trying to describe it you know um trying to how do you describe everything that's that's in there but um you know uh that reminds me of a a story about Roy know I've seen I was see before I met him I saw all of these images you know and I studied his work and I attached all of this philosophical stuff to each image you know and then I was in a gallery talk with him one time and he broke down all of these photographs and it was so simple what he was saying you know that was in his mind that just blew me away I was like oh man you mean that's all you were thinking about you took that picture bam you know so yeah that happens you know so like I said you bring your experiences to it he brings his experiences to it and you meet in the middle somewhere hopefully there's another question I saw over here yes sir yes sir all up in well I mean that's you know that that's hard to do too you know and that's there's a trick to that too you know uh yeah you're right I mean I'm like a fly on the wall most of the time you know that that's what I'm trying to convey you know okay I want you to see this like I see it you know but you see it this a different way just anyway uh so but yeah I'm in there though I'm up in it all up in it for yes sir well the the thing is I shot color all of the time I just didn't have the money to print it so I always shot color with black and white sometimes I would have a camera with color in it and a camera with black and white in it and whatever I was doing I shot with both of them but I could control the outcome of the black and white myself you know printed soup it and then print it contact and see what I had and then uh printed myself that's why there's a lot more black and white than color but I shot color all the time and the thing about color is you know the world is colorful you know it's not just black and white black and white is is nice but the world is color that's why I'm shooting just color now I mean I shot black and white for 40 years I got tons of negatives that I haven't even printed yet so uh I like shooting color uh it's a whole another language too you know it's not the same language as black and white you have to come at it you know it's like speaking English and Spanish or French you know you have to learn that language as well okay I love shooting uh negative I mean that's what I shoot for myself uh sometimes I shoot digital but the thing about digital thing about the difference is you wear in in analog you're wear to one ASA you know if you're shooting 400 that's what you're shooting 400 in a digital you can shoot you can shoot 400 and then the next frame you can get 6400 you know so it's a big advantage of shooting uh digital photography but I think if you're going to shoot photography you need to have uh a good foundation and and that good foundation comes from black and white and being Weare to that one ASA if you're going to be be a photographer get we to something something basic right well thank you so much we [Applause] round thank tail thank tail