Stewart, Spillers, Moten: Frank Stewart Summer Sessions. Recorded live at The Phillips Collection

[Applause] good evening good evening everyone welcome to the Phillips collection I'm Jonathan binstock the brenberg director and CEO and I am really excited about this evening you can ask any of my staff members they're probably saying I'm glad this evening has finally arrived this guy can stop talking about it um welcome to all of you uh when I I I started five and a half months ago here at the Phillips collection uh and when I learned that you know this was what March probably 15th or something like that I learned that on August 17th there would be a conversation between Frank Stewart whose uh work I hadn't yet seen uh and uh Professor Hortense Spillers introduced by Fred Moten I was I was astounded um Professor Spillers and and Fred moton are are among the greatest theoreticians writers thinkers of our time uh and I mean that uh and it is an honor to to be here at the Phillips with them and sharing the stage I'm I kind of want to get Fred to stand up here for just a second so I can say I I shared the stage with him too but we'll we'll we won't go that far um so a little why why am I so excited so this is a little personal aside um these two individuals uh Professor Spillers Fred moon loom very large in my little corner of the world in a lot of people's corners of the world I should say but certainly mine um Professor Spillers I I read your essay mama's baby Papa's maybe an American grammar book which is a very important essay seismic in its impact uh when it was assigned to me I didn't have the idea to read it by Professor Michael award who you may know uh at the University of Michigan in 1992 when I was 12 years old no I you could not understand this essay as a 12-year-old I mean I had to read it like three or four times um it was instrumental in Awakening me at the time a young man uh from the Cozy Suburban mindset of uh sub Suburban New York City I was in an arbor at the time of course but to a world of ideas that really changed the direction of my life and one among many essays that I wrote but certain certainly an essay that I remember to this day and a name Professor Hortense Spillers that I remember to this day um so in 1994 you know I end up meeting Sam Gillum here in Washington DC and starting my research on Sam Gillum uh and I spent the next six years picking up the breadcrumbs of Sam's incredible career and simply narrativizing as I would say what happened so that other people could understand what he accomplished uh 20 years later after I defend my dissertation in the year 2000 in 20120 Fred moton writes an essay called the circle with the hole in the middle and in a few pages I mean I I worked on like two retrospectives I me years in the archives the librar like picking up these breadcrumbs in like six pages this guy writes an essay that blows my mind and is easily the best piece of writing ever written on Sam Gilliam um and so I just wanted to tell you a little personal side here to let you know by the way it blew Sam's mind too because we we looked at each other and just said oh man that essay you know because how do you describe that essay it reads like Sam's art looks it's just a whole it's just an experience um so uh we agree that that that that was an amazing piece of writing so here the two of them are uh with us at this Gem of an institution the Philips collection which we all love so much celebrating the incredible Frank [Applause] Stewart it is a testament to Frank Stewart's long and deeply influential career that this unprecedented conversation with with such extraordinary luminaries in in in the midst uh would be the final program of the Stuart summer sessions I am thrilled to welcome you all to this historic moment here in DC where Frank Stewart's practice began as many of you now know with his mother's Kodak browny camera in 1963 as he photographed the March on Washington for jobs and freedoms you can see those images and so much more of course in the exhibition Frank Stewart's Nexus Nexus which is his first Museum retrospective co-organized by the Philips and the Telfair museums um the exhibition is co is curated by Ruth [Applause] fine formerly of the national Gallery of Art and DC and still my friend uh and of course curated as well curated as well by Fred Moten the poet scholar and professor of performance studies at nyu's Tish School of Fine Arts associate curator of the Phillips Renee moer coordinated the presentation at the Phillips I want to thank all of you for your outstanding work the exhibition is generously supported by Altria Group who is the presenting sponsor John Mason is in the house thank you John it was also made possible by the Linda lenberg Kaplan exhibition fund the carollyn Alper fund for contemporary art the Marian F golden charitable fund and the Tera foundation for American art it is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts we are grateful for all of this important support we could not make an exhibition like this or have an evening like this without this support thank you Frank for your six Decades of Art and generosity the Phillips is proud to host your retrospective and thank you Fred Moten and Professor Spillers for joining us this evening and now it is my pleasure to introduce Fred Moten [Applause] U thank you so much Jonathan I want to thank um you and all the rest of the wonderful people here the Phillips who have made this show possible especially Renee Moore Ashley Whitfield um made um this show possible and also this great night possible which is a real dream come true for me um and the other person that I have to mention again with great gratitude is um is Ruth fine um I'm pulling out my phone because I just want to get this right um I wanted to mention for those of you who don't know that just this past week it was announced that Ruth would be the recipient of the Lawrence a Flashman award for scholarly excellence in the field of American art history [Applause] um and it it just reflects a long and distinguished and generous career and I get I feel like I feel all the the beautiful weight of that generosity in in this show five years years ago now um through uh another mutual friend a great photographer um and osario Daniel Dawson uh Ruth and I met and and began to to plan and to to think about or I should say she brought me in to to help plan I didn't help that much but to help plan and think about this show and what it would be and really introduce me to to Frank's work I I went down to Philly on the train and met Frank and Ruth's apartment which was just full every inch of the wall covered with Frank's work and um it felt like you were in the middle of a flower that hadn't quite bloomed yet just a Bud and to be upstairs to see the extraordinary blooming of that show in in that space has just been amazing and getting to know Frank and getting to know about his his history and being able to listen to him talk has just been a beautiful education for me including I remember especially the moment when you told me that your stepfather was Phineas newborn and a a bell went off in my head because another of of of Professor spiller's extraordinary essays is is called the crisis of the ne Neo intellectual a postate written 25 years after the publication of Harold Cruz's classic book the crisis of the Negro intellectual and she spins out a a beautiful theory about what a black creative intellectual is and should be and could be at at that historical moment in the early 90s and and one of the key figures whom she sort of posits as a kind of model for what this black creative intellectuality might be is Phineas newer and I thought the only actual idea that I even had to share and offer to Ruth for this show was we gotta get Spillers and steuart on stage together to just talk okay um one way to think about this show is called Frank Stewart's Nexus and for me what is most fruitful and important and generative in Black studies women's studies literary studies over the last 50 years one one way to describe that would be that it is cense spiller's Matrix so I think of Nexus and Matrix and when I add those two words together somehow because I'm not very good at math I get Memphis um and and they're both from Memphis um and I just said I I just want to hear them talk about Memphis but of course Memphis is such an amazing City it's a it's a it's a terrible and also beautiful Marketplace a place of all kinds of unprecedented and almost unimaginable Gathering U but also dispersal because it's a place through which Goods flow and through which people flow and through which it's the whole brutal history that we share in which goods were also people flows and um it's it's it's like a source and it's also a delta in a way at the same time and so and it's also I would like to think of it as one of the northernmost Caribbean cities it's a it's a global city um and it's it's a city from which a tremendous kind of intens at the level of how we study local space requires us to also recognize that that local space is part of the world and and these are two of the most profoundly International thinkers that that one could ever imagine Professor Spillers and Frank Stewart um I know I'm supposed to do all that stuff where I can tell you the you know Frank was the for 30 years a senior staff photographer at the at at at the jazz at Lincoln Center and Professor Spillers is the who is it Gertrude Conway Prof professor and distinguished research Professor Emer at Vanderbilt University they've won every honor and that you could imagine um and again it's just an extraordinary privilege and pleasure to be able to introduce them to you today and to I'm going to rush back down to my seat so I can see what y'all [Applause] do am I on am I on well you hear me yeah it's our first and uh we both came from not too far from this was in Jackson Mississippi so in Memphis you can cross the street and be in missii so this image kind of conjures up for me all the things I uh that was going on when I was a boy that were negative you know some parts of the positive things things in Memphis was colored by this negativity that was around us all the time and uh here it is right here in front of us you got anything to say yeah I didn't know we were going to start here good departure you know yeah it is it it it is a good departure I think the first thing I wanted say is thank everybody for bringing us together right definitely I'm deeply appreciative um for the invitation uh to be here uh even though I think of myself in relationship to photography as something of an impostor I was thinking what what in the world could I tell Frank Stewart or uh Fred or Ruth or anybody about about photography but but nevertheless you know I'm I'm here to do to do the best talk about I can C do and talk about the culture around photography yeah I could I can I can I can certainly do that I was thinking that I would start with an admission um in addition to not knowing much about photography that the next thing I would say to you is that I'm afraid of the photograph if not photography if that makes sense that makes a lot of sense you yeah photography lies okay but the photograph doesn't right no the photograph lies too oh it's the biggest liar well I was thinking I was afraid of it because it told the truth right and that M of opinion okay and that one of the reasons why I'm and this is the first time I've said anything like this publicly that um um the sense that visually and I think that is probably um the way I respond to anything about myself recordings of my voice or any videos or YouTubes of myself I don't necessarily want to see them uh I'm in uh a film by a very famous um film maker actually and it kind of frightens me to look at myself on film I can't explain why that's why that's so but I thought of it as a subjective response to uh to the visual that I've had all my life and I think it's um I can't explain it I mean perhaps somebody in the the audience will be able to explain what this means and I've thought it meant as far as the photograph is concerned that the photograph captures all your imperfections physically and Visually in ways that uh you cannot dis symble or hide that you can that that that you see them right and that that might not have been the aim of the photographer or the aim of Photography to do that that somehow that that happens right that's that's a fair H it's a fair assessment yeah and so I thought well that's that that's the one contribution that I can make to to a colloquial or this col that that we're having that what is it about photography and the and the term photogenic might have something to do with uh with that fear I mean etymologically speaking I don't know when that term enters uh the lexicography of uh of of Aesthetics and and the artists photogenic I suppose it's not in our vocabulary as a possibility before photography so that I think in in in the in the ordinary imagination photography is always associated with the beautiful people or beautiful photographs they can be too but then that's what photography understands I think be ug but I think the I think just ordinary people taking pictures you know when you say I like that picture of myself or I don't like it I think it has something to do with that what thing about pH the fear of what what's going to be revealed in the photograph the thing about photography is everybody everybody's family has an album of their family yeah in photographs yeah and uh that's that's that's kind of a spin-off of what it can do it's like uh didn't Harry tell me talk about she sold a shadow to to uh pay for the for what her her work okay she sold pictures of herself I sold the shadow there's a saying okay yeah and she she understood it well so did Frederick der he uh had a lot of uh dealings with photography graphy and a lot of talking about it but the image for the non photographer and the image for the photographer are different aren't they I mean yeah I mean because the way you and Fred talk about light for instance I mean Fred picks it up in his writing on the basis of something that you say about that's all it is light on Surface anyway photography yeah that's part of the intelligence of the medium is that it's just light on Surface so it's not reality these guys are not walking there they just are not walking there they're just uh you know that's just light on Surface right there but you know I brought this up just to talk about how we grew up and in a culture that was surrounded by these guys you know in Memphis and where were you when you took that and where were you standing I wondered I'm right here where you were you were right there there's a 28 mm something right there were they aware that you were oh yeah they but there was a a rally that day and I had a a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to shoot in the south and I was coming to go to Memphis from New York and I stopped in Jackson and I saw a newspaper that said there going to be a clan rally here next week on such and such a day said I'm coming back for that Clan rally hell yeah so I went to Memphis and I came back and sure enough they were rallying they behinds off and these guys were late so um that's what's happening they trying to get to their you know their spot yeah in the parade in the rally okay so this is what that's about but it just the photograph is not just about that it's about how we felt about segregation and all this racism growing up in it you know I mean that's why I chose this first one I think that's probably among the most terrifying images in my memory bank or in my understanding or it's supposed to be like that you're supposed to JW your if you're africanamerican it's suppos to be like d there they are and I would have to say and I'm sorry I think that [Music] um the Washington Monument reminds me of those hoods oh that's that's another story that's another story and I look at the Monument I saw it today coming over to to the Phillips and um whenever I have that thought in my mind that that looks like a long Clan hat long I have to kind of Turn away and go oh you're not supposed to think that right with the point top but it does right to me anyway and that's that's that's that's pretty terrifying right there well let's let's get over for this see if we can but what amazes me is that you were able to get that you were able to get the shot and nobody asked you any questions about why you were photographing them or they never said nothing to me they in fact they didn't even look at me I don't think I was just there taking pictures you know and nobody nobody that wasn't the only picture I taken because they had a parade so I took the parade and okay it was it was something it was okay this is Chicago this is a contrast in black and white and I kind of grew up with a lady that's getting on the bus right there m i mean i didn't know her but she represents black ladies that raised me in in Memphis and we would come across the lady uh on the right there all the time yes and there was like a black code there were Black Codes at that time you couldn't even look at white people in the eye you know you couldn't talk to them uh you had to get off of the the sidewalk when they pass and all that I mean we didn't have to do that CU white people didn't come to our neighborhood yeah so we didn't but you supposed to you were supposed to and you couldn't look them in the eye and they had this thing called Rec eyeballing you about that so all of this was still going on when I was a little boy growing up in Memphis and um this kind of conjures that up it reminds me of [Music] um an image of Rosa Park sitting on a bus you know that famous oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the posture of the figure on on the right reminds me of that and there's something anachronistic about it too I mean it could well it says 72 but it could be earlier right it could be the 50s in a sense the posture of the figures yeah it could be now yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean like what's happening in the country now it definitely could be down all right and this one is called the cleanup okay that's right so uh you know when you think about Lincoln and black folks you think about oh he freed the slaves but I don't know if he freed the slaves he definitely didn't free this man but the thing about the Civil War I think is that he wasn't freeing the SL slaves he was freeing the the Free Labor of the South which was making them very wealthy more wealthy than the north at that time so the Civil Rights was uh the Civil War was mostly about freeing the slaves so they weren't Free Labor anymore that's how I felt about it and this is what this is about to me that they really not free anymore because soon as the Civil War ended you had these work camps these work FS mhm where you know they would you had black codes and they would put these guys like Partridge farm and those places that was all work you know they they pick cotton for free again M they did all kind of work for free again yeah so this is what that's about for me what time of day did you shoot that this is 5:30 in the morning and I'm coming from uh morning I'm coming from Louisville Kentucky on a bus I had a bus ticket you can buy a bus ticket for a month and go around you know get on the bus get off and I was taking pictures in these cities I had come from the Kentucky Derby at that time okay so I'm coming back home to New York and we got a lay we got to stop in uh DC so I'm gonna get off the bus and I'm going to go see what's happening at these monuments oh okay so it's 5:30 in the morning you see he's cleaning up after it mhm the evening before and the sun is coming in on an angle M cuz it's 5:30 is just coming up and uh that's why it looks kind of like it does and why American gossip well you know grantwood and Gordon Parks they did their American go this is my American go does it say anything to you because I I took it for black women all around the world oh yeah it says so what this is a lot this is in Ghana and it's in the mountains called the aquap Pim and I have property there uh these women have to go early in the morning to get their water they have to walk about a mile to get their water and come back to do their daily cleaning and their daily cooking with this water and you have to be a very hearty woman to do this you know everybody can't do this and in the evening men do it they have to go get the water so it just talks to me about how strong black women are and how much they do work uh it's a beautiful choreography yeah well I got him the I was lucky I could get him in syn in lock step you know doing the same thing kind of body uh language the same cont trasta type thing happen this is my Lisa so this is Hawkins Bar and Grill you ever been there yeah yeah Memphis is yeah yeah yeah so I that one to me is mysterious you you want to talk about that I had an uncle that worked here when he was 16 yeah and uh so I did a book on barbecue you know it's called smok Stack Lightning and this was the the first chapter was on Memphis Memphis Barbecue M so we would come here we would end up in here we' go out and get all the places around and Charlie Virgos you know Charlie BOS downtown so this was like uh 2:30 in the morning he's getting ready to close up and the last drag you know and you get a a setup he didn't serve alcohol he he served a setup he didn't have alcohol you know setup is like ice bucket of ice two glasses and you bring your own bottle mhm so when they had the jeuk box and they played nothing but Blues all day long night long mhm and it just it felt so familiar to me growing up right there and the setting is yeah so I mean it could be anything you could go there now and see and it's yeah you know so I like the Timeless quality here of the image smoking the ls y'all know am she lived here in this city you know her work a little bit oo she was a monster she was a monster so at this time I'm working with David Drisco and we're working on two two centuries of black art in America we're doing this documentary so we we we got to Elma and you know we set it up and we taking pictures and we're doing the the shoot and the other woman that we're doing that day was uh Lois Jones Lois Milo Jones uhuh so Elma Thomas is in the home world and Lis Jones was a great painter Lis Jones want to know what is Elma doing what what is she doing what she doing today what she painting what kind of color she you know she wanted to know about what what Elma [Laughter] do this is kind of about two different women but this is one woman here Fred you want to say something about I to ask word phph kind of you know ish Reed came up with that book Reckless eyeballing you know and uh it's definitely a term it could definitely get you lynched at one point of time in history yeah Reckless ey it was definitely a black code and I was in the uh train station going to uh New Orleans one time and it was like late at night and there was a janitor and he saw I had a camera and he was up there boy you know about Reckless eyeballing I said no what is reckless eyeball man you get lynched around here for reckless eyeballing with that camera so you know it was still definitely a thing in my lifetime yeah yeah yeah thatth also yeah and that it's everywhere and everybody presumes that they can be a subject of it or a maker of it right nowadays yeah everybody photographer now especially with the iPhone that's right yeah I mean so it's all over everywhere Imaging image making being subject to being seen in a certain kind of way so yeah I think it's uh for me that's that's what it would mean that that recklessness is that it's all over the place right that you can't you really can't get away from it yeah well you know when I started out when I started out in photography I wanted to tell the truth you know man I just want to tell the truth out here yeah but a guy named Lou Draper who was in kamoa at the time told me uh well you know photography lies man it's hard to tell the truth when somebody Li when when some the thing that you're dealing with lies okay so I got that when you think about it I got that from him well lying in the sense that um something happens between the moment that the photograph is taken and what comes out at the other end right is that where the lying ised it's not reality anymore it's something that a medium something that a medium created not something that God created it's something that a medium created the camera created so it's like a map of the territory it's not the territory okay so none of that goes through the head of the subject that's being gazed at as it were no no no no that's yeah that's that that's got to be thinking about that for a long time to come to that realization yeah that's right this is about a medium it's not about when being gazed at is thinking about something else yeah how is this going to look yeah how am I going to look you know in a in yeah but not the process itself right not the process is itself they don't think about that you know like when you taking pictures of your grandma she got to pose a certain way exactly she get to put her feet a certain way yeah yeah and she's always got one foot you know yeah yeah yeah she this is how I'm going to present myself in this Photograph right you know exactly right yeah not that Elma was doing that she didn't look like she didn't kiss she just wanted her wig hat on don't take me without my wig wait a minute let me get my wig hat had another lady on my head yeah I know lady there uh this is where were you when you shot this here Maha Texas see Maha Texas where the first juneth celebration took place I mean where were you situated that you catch that I'm right I mean that's wow that's of all the images that I saw that one made me go wait a minute wait wait so where were you I mean what was happening that you oh was it in relation to them or and yeah I'm standing right there he I'm standing right there in front of him and this is going on right in front of me and I'm like damn I guess so yeah this this is what y'all doing down here yeah yeah and that's a juneth celebration juneth yeah uh when was that 93 Maha Texas and they still the slave the descendants of the slaves still had that property that they that they uh did the celebration on so different families had different different plots and different little Shacks on the and so they would come there once a year and they would barbecue and they would uh throw foot you know and they would dance and they would have all of these uh things going on and this is one of them and the figure on the left is doing what she looks like she's trying to ride this dude no no no down here in the oh right I got that I got that much you talking about the guy that's truncated right yes you know he's he's dancing too he's dancing they dancing you know it was some hip-hop action going on and [Laughter] okay you know self self P you know the my work take took me all over the world in my career and this was um working with Philip Morris here I'm actually doing films but when I wasn't working for them and I had a little time off in the daytime I would go out and take pictures for myself but this is in uh Dominican Republic and back then they had just stopped uh doing commercials for cigarettes on Billboard and um on TV that's why you don't see commercials about cigarettes anymore but they still had had they still were doing that in these small uh islands like Dominican Republic it's not a small island either Big Island it shares with Haiti so anyway this was a movie house and it was on a day when no movies were going on nobody was in there that was the booth where you put the money in and you talk to the person through this hole and there was another glass in back of it so that's what's going on here I'm doing this reflection and self Port of me in this uh in the space you know I looked at that quickly and then I did several double takes but it was almost buddhistic to me the the the posture the the composition of it right the way the figure is is is situated um in relationship to what turned out to be a car back there but that looks like something else right I mean it strikes me as as a kind of buddhistic posture that that's what I thought of when I first looked at it and I thought huh what year is this what's the name of this and then I yeah and then I got something else but I had to look at it a while background the ocean the background is the ocean and that's like okay malikone in Cuba it's called the malikone I think it's called malikone here too all right now how we talking about Trum bones how we talking about it so this you know we both come from a yeah a tradition and a culture in the South see I was uh baptized a Catholic but I had a my uncle married this woman whose father was a reverend in the Baptist Church and I used to sometimes go and visit that Baptist Church and I was baptized Baptist oh yeah yeah oh man well you know uh and learn God's trombone by hard once upon a time okay I used to I used to be able to recite the Prodigal Son and The Creation that's the kind of thing that uh kids of of my generation you had you you you had to learn those you had to learn poems like that long poems for little programs at Christmas and Easter and that kind of thing Lift Every Voice you had to be able to sing those all those verses that's right well my foray into the Baptist Church would they had music in there real music you know in the Catholic Church you had an organ you know and you had some Gregorian chant type stuff that had nothing to do with black folks but when I went to the Baptist Church it had everything to do with back folks you know yeah yeah and uh sometimes the the spirit would be in the room and they it would descend on a sister and she would get the spirit and you know I would be looking at her like wow what's happening to her she having an epileptic fit or what yes uh and then she would start flopping around and there would be two other sister Big Sisters to you know get on both sides of her so that her dress wouldn't go up and all that you know and it would keep her up on her her feet and all that right so I thought that was very interesting yes much more interesting than Catholicism have you seen Services where um women would hurl their pocket books oh no I haven't seen to the pulpit I haven't seen that got the spirit so I haven't seen I've seen that I haven't seen that one in in in the churches that I grew up in yeah people would get Spirit real hard and that was an example of what yeah throwing pocketbooks at the preacher yeah you can take the money out or what no so they can there would be some Usher back there to catch it right oh so this was a mass baptism in Harlem okay uh daddy Grace Church was still going on I think they do it every year in June June 9th something like that and you know know you got to wear white and you got you can be born again even if you have been born again the previous year you would still be born again and they come out and get born again and they have a fire hose that they they point up to the sky and it comes down like rain and everybody gets wet and everybody gets baptized so this is what this is all about and I think that's the last that's the last one are we there's no more are we opening up for questions yeah uh big ups and respect uh one thing that I really love about you man is um I went upstairs and I saw the inkjet work that you are doing now and for me as an artist that came up after you and inspired by you it's just really good to see you you know because a lot of artists complain oh this is not really like you talked about the iPhone that's not real but here you are using materials that are current you know what I mean so showing the possibilities and I always associated with how uh the scribes used to deal with um what is it with the way they illustrated The Bible and then the group Berg press came out so you know I just want to know how it is that you feel about the current things that are going on with photography where everybody has a camera but you still have to be an artist you know what I mean to like really catch stuff some where it's not just an accident well look I did 40 Years of uh black and white uh developing it myself and printing it and uh then uh digital came along and that there's no way that I thought that digital was going to overtake black and white film you know man you know you got to be crazy you cu the first digital was like you know golf ball grain and this is never going to work you know and then it started taking over and then you couldn't even buy a camera that took film anymore they didn't make them so uh it's another language and it's just like going to France or Spain and learning how to speak that language there's another language you have to learn how to speak if you're a photograph visual artist so that's what I I was always shooting color so I had that base and Foundation of black and white so I could you know I already had a foundation that I could uh fall back on shooting digital you do the pral St no but the thing about it is I still shoot in in negative color and I scan it digitally and print it digitally so you know One hand washes the other I know we got some no thank you uh I have the microphone over here and I'll pass it around um Frank thank you again this is Ray um I really appreciate just all your work I had the opportunity to work with you in New York for many years or work around you I should say um but as Mr was talking about as well uh The Reckless eyeballing that was that was pretty interesting to come across cuz as you know I'm a photographer as well with you is I think what we're grateful for not only for your six decades uh of of work and massal work is uh in contrast to that term how does the photographer or how what's the hope for the photographer to remain with Integrity so it's not Reckless work that you produce but I appreciate knowing that it is lie I didn't think about it that way before so thanks again for bringing a new gem but uh if you want to talk a little bit about that like what's your take on how not for it not to be Reckless thank you so reckless eyeball and just talks about the black code that white folks had in the South for Negroes looking at white people and especially white people in the eye that was called Reckless eyeball and then you could go to jail for that so uh we adopted that term in photography in terms of uh just being reckless in terms of Taking Chances with uh taking pictures like nobody else has in the past so you're doing you're doing a reckless eyeball in in terms of something new and that's basically what that means for me you know regular ey yes sir you got the microphone no I don't need a microphone you don't need you got one of them voices yeah yeah I'm good um so first I apologize so Michael award I went to Michigan so the last name I expected to hear was Michael award particularly coming from somebody white that me you to the cast class and I was just at cast on Thursday so it's that's crazy so here's my question um you're taking and this actually Frank for you as well as Professor you actually take pictures in three different periods of American life and then you take it in a number of different continents and you're and you're interacting with folks like Rome be folk like Whit marcelus and a range of others what I wanted you to talk about was I think of Rome beard with Marcel Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison as negro Nationals right and and there's a moment where you're taking pictures of negroes but you're also taking pictures of black folks I was wondering if you could talk about that you know that kind of how you think about that distinction and then to ex you actually had conversations with folks like R and about this you how that uh um I never had that conversation with whon or Rome about the distinction of a negro and a black person but um to get them both in a frame is just a photograph you know I mean I'm not asking them what their affiliation is you know are you a nationalist are you a black nationalist are you a are you a African pessimist afro pessimist afro Pim afro yeah you know I'm not asking them any any of those questions I'm just uh I'm just trying to fill up a frame and talk about what I think these people are about or what they're doing or what the action is and I hope that I bring all of my experiences to this Frame and you bring all your experiences to this Frame and we can meet in the middle somewhere about what is actually going on because you never know what's going on yes sir great uh good evening uh you were working on a project on botney with uh Dr Rudy Lumbard and Dr David Drisco um now that they're no longer here with us are you going to see that project through I would like to I would really like to but uh David didn't he didn't uh he didn't finish his part of the project you know he was supposed to well he did a lot of illustrations and he was supposed to uh talk about stories attached stories to these uh these herbs you know the book was called the education of a Sher Cropper and uh he took me to where he grew up where his father his father made this Shack in Georgia in the woods in Georgia I mean it was like believe me it was a Shaq and uh he came from absolutely nothing and uh his grandmother was of Indian Des American Indian and they knew all about these herbs and what you could eat what you could Med medicinal herbs and you know he was supposed to do all of that but half of them didn't get done so he had the illustrations but he didn't have the stories so I got to come up with some eyes you know to finish this book and Rudy and them did a great job Rudy did a great job of uh introducing David in this book and both of them are gone and his I missed both of them a great deal Rudy lumbar was just a phenomenal character he was a chef and a teacher and a Frontline civil rights worker did you know Rudy I didn't Dr Rudy Lumbard oh no was a bad cat in fact bwin U dedicated the book to him okay he in fact he took Tony Morrison to France to meatball okay and they had a great time together who else who else a couple of hands right here I think I think Fred has got Fred say something have the last question and he has a nice surprise uhoh I'm going to have another birthday or that was the last surprise I had up in here I'm sorry may I go okay so thank you for an amazing discussion I was a little surprised that uh you didn't discuss the image that I believe is on the cover of the the catalog the book and that's on a lot of the promotionals of that Regal black couple wearing white the soul brother and his lady on the back like they're in the back of the bus they're just there their clothes are just perfection and I I wish we could look at the image and I wanted to know what's the story behind that who are they where were they going okay like royalty that's an interesting uh observation because uh I was doing a essay for Life Magazine on youth in Harlem and they actually wanted me to shoot gangs I said man look yeah there's no way I'm going to get into a gang to shoot it so you know they got a lot of black folks with boom boxes that uh it seems like a whole movement you know and that was right around the time uh hip-hop was coming out I think Hip-hop came out in 74 that was grandmas flowers in there so uh they got boom B that's the front of the bus and I'm s sitting on one side and they get on and they doing their thing and if you notice it's a black couple but they're they're holding hands but they're looking in opposite direction so I felt like that was indicative of where black men and black women were at that time and probably at this time too they together but they looking in different directions and that's what that that's what that photograph was about yeah I don't know them but they're like I know them you know them I mean there's something very familiar or intimate about yeah you know them yeah yeah I think one last yeah miss it Miss yeah sure I'm extremely curious what was the best advice you received as a young photographer and how would that differ from the best advice you would give today to a young photographer the best advice well I didn't get too much advice but I came up with my own good good advice if you starting out as a young photographer just use something simp simple like start out with one lens One camera and master that you know before you go to a zoom lens or a wide angle or telephoto just get a 50 that's kind of the normal way you see it and master that the light the the exposures you know you can do that and you be well on your way if you master that you be well on your way to being a a good photographer I don't know about a great photographer but a good photographer yes they I guess we need this to be the last question um so before I ask it I'll just take the liberty of saying on behalf of everybody thank y'all so much um I was actually thinking about the the juneth photo which I is my favorite I I wonder why well a lot of people's favorite the I I think it's because it leads me to to to to try to ask the same question that that Professor Spillers asked where where were you in that and and and but but you know if there's this beautiful way in which it always feels like you're photographing from within the photograph like you're you're with the people that you photograph not not above them or against them but you're with them oh I I was right there with them believe me they were all around me too but this is yeah but this question is actually for Professor Spillers cuz I was cuz I feel like it makes me think that in some ways there's a relationship between photography and close reading the way you read um fauler the the way you read um you know social situations you it's like you're reading them from from inside is is there a relation is there a relay how where are you in relation to the text that you read yeah for oh good know that was for me yeah never thought about that Fred um where am I in relationship to you know I think [Music] um if I could just piggy back off what Frank said a moment ago or what what you just said about um being inside the the the the object or the phenomenon or the event I think that's I think that's what I would I would try to describe um I know what it feels like to to write something um and that might help to explain what I'm attempting to say one of the problems that I have now with um our Technologies is that I can't write at a at a computer I can I can only write L handed and then I convert it to a to to a computer and I think the reason why that's so is that not only is is is it a generational thing but I for me writing is is physiological I have to actually feel a sentence I have to have a certain kind of relationship to the words that's not just um something on paper but it has to have a kind of livingness or liveliness for me and when that when I can feel that in the sense of relief when I've had some success in getting an idea down on paper that's when I know that it that it's working and that it's and that it's right and so it's it's probably primitive and crude in that sense but um that's kind of the way that's kind of the way I do it and so I think that's really not having much of a sense of what you're doing other than um something physical that's happening in your body into to yourself in a particular moment right I mean it has to vividly be lived as as uh as a word or a thing I'm trying to think and that's it comes out of that really so in relation to that photograph FR like when we look at that photograph the thing that feels totally clear yeah is that as hard as those folks were getting down yeah you were getting down just that hard too yeah you know getting with it right down with it yeah no you know time kind of stands still for me in those situations you know where I'm concentrating so hard on what's going to be in the frame that I'm not hearing or I'm not cognizant of anything that's around me other than that frame you know and what that's going to say what the frame is going to say at in the end that comes across in the in your in your work then that that intensity right intense yeah intense it's intense yeah it's a beautiful intensity sometimes I I don't even hear the music you know because I know that the music is not going to translate just what the music is saying to the person that's making it is going to [Applause] translate I want thank y'all for coming [Applause] too yes ma'am am what I'm sure that was before this was 1975 76 yeah 1976 well she wasn't a superstar yet at that time and was she still living [Music] no well she she was a great artist no no question about it and I'm sure she knew she was a great artist uh looking at what was going on at that time you know and looking at what the other people of her ilk was doing you know she was way ahead of them and way above them you know in terms of abstraction and all of that kind of stuff speechless that sounds great sounds thank you thank you for that thank you