Who Am I to You?
How understanding of Community shapes creative process.
One of the benefits of writing profiles on fellow artists is getting the chance to discuss at length their creative process and to learn from it. Since June 2016, I’ve been doing just that for the Canadian photography quarterly Photolife. The column, entitled ‘Community’ has a double mandate. First, explore the diversity of the photographic industry in the country by featuring talents from different regions of the country, age, culture, gender, sexuality, and practice. Second, examine how these image-makers relate to the communities they are photographing. Through these conversations, I’ve come to see just how influential those relationships are. The way creatives understand community, their role within it, and their responsibilities towards it determine how they build a project.
The current history of documentary photography is in large parts one of foreigners, mainly white men, turning their gaze on people who live in what they perceived as “exotic” places, and who are seen as ‘photogenic’ exactly because of their difference.
In Canada, one such example has been the recurring focus on communities who abstains from using some modern technologies such as the Mennonites or Hutterites. When Tim Smith encountered the Deerboine Hutterite colony in Manitoba he was immediately and directly confronted with both his status as an outsider and reminded of his implicit bias. As he set out to photograph a group of women tending their field, one of them turned the tables and took pictures of him with her phone. “Like many people, I had preconceptions since I rarely had any interactions with them growing up in Winnipeg, other than seeing them occasionally when they would descend on my family’s garage sales. I suppose I had an idea that Hutterites were technology-averse, so when a young woman pulled a cell phone out of her dress that was a very immediate clue that I really knew nothing about them. It also triggered my curiosity to learn as much as I could,” he told me then.
With this experience in mind, Smith endeavoured to create a more nuanced portrayal of the community. One where individuals are treated as full human beings with complex personalities as opposed to simply representatives of a singular group’s defining characteristics. One where he directly interrogates the preconceived ideas we have about Hutterites. And one where he resists chastising them for their way of life, or romanticizing it.
“It’s easy to show a simplified view of Hutterite life because they’re people who look different and live differently than us. If that’s the hook, then it’s lazy at best and discriminatory at worst. Humans inherently look to simplify the world around them, to put things into different boxes, each one separate from one another. This leads to all sorts of problems in understanding each other and connecting with one another. Nuance is incredibly important in addressing that. The more time I’ve spent learning about the Hutterites, the more I know I don’t know,” — Tim Smith
Accordingly his creative process was built on critical introspection, trust and accountability. This, in turn, he mentioned, entails investing time, being open, honest and upfront.
As we spoke, I remembered the many teachings of Indigenous research methodologies, which stress reciprocity, relational accountability, self-location and cultural respect (see Smith 1999; Kovach 2009; Wilson 2008). These are important principles to uphold when working with communities that are not your own. Give back to the community that is sharing their stories with you by ensuring that your work is of benefit to them, not just to you. Be responsible, that is consider where you’re coming from and how that influences you, as well as the potential implication of your work, overt or hidden. Discuss those openly and act upon all the feedback. Take time. Don’t rush. Smith has been working with the Deerboine colony for a decade and counting. That said, no amount of commitment, would ever make him wholly comprehend the realities and entanglements of Hutterites lives. Indeed, there is much to be said about work that comes from an artist deeply familiar with the community they are representing.
Jalani Morgan, who is Caribbean-Canadian, would seem to fit that profile. He excels at making undeniable portraits of his peers. He covers Black Lives Matter. He knows the struggles. And so on. Yet, when we chatted, in early 2017, he started by saying “I’m not the expert of anything, except of my own experience. I’m not the voice of the Black community. I’m one storyteller amongst all those who need to be heard, spoken to, spoken about and seen.” A good reminder that artists, just like the people we photograph, film, paint, etc., should not be strictly seen as archetypes of the community they come from. Yes, they can illuminate aspects of its experience that outsiders wouldn’t access, wouldn’t know to look for, would be oblivious to, or would turn a blind eye on because it doesn’t fit their pre-built narrative, itself the outcome of centuries of fallacious stories. But they also can do more. Morgan is also a talented photo editor, now working for the hyperlocal community newspaper the West End Phoenix, a baseball and football fan, and has covered a range of stories for publications like MacLean’s.
Hence, he believes his role is to participate in broadening the scope of our collective memory and that he shares that task with the sitter. Photographer and photographed are collaborators, working towards the same goal. “It’s important to remember that not everyone gets their portrait taken. In fact, it’s quite an unnatural thing to do. Especially when seen within a historical perspective,” he explained, hinting at how people of colour did not usually have their likeness recorded for posterity, thereby creating an imbalance in who is seen as part of the History.
“So, I let them know that by working together, we’re creating history. Hopefully this helps them understand that they are as much a part of this process as I am. I contribute great light and great composition; they bring the mood and the energy exuded.” — Jalani Morgan
This idea of collaboration between the different parties involved in the image-making process is at the heart of an ambitious project by photographers Susan Meiselas and Wendy Ewarld, and scholars Ariella Azoulay (Brown University), Leigh Raiford (UC Berkeley) and Laura Wexler (Yale), called Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. Its intent: to re-frame the history of photography as one defined by different types of collaboration. “One could argue that previous ideations of photo history are particularly masculine in their orientation, and even misogynistic in their intellectual framework. They celebrate the idea of the single photographer who goes somewhere, takes an impression of a scene, creating a frozen reality with the actual subject either mute or missing,” said Ryerson Image Centre curator Paul Roth.
In essence, this history, by extolling the artist, negates the fundamental role communities play in creative processes, when they are in fact at the heart of it.
To recognize that is to open ourselves to the possibility of a radical shift in how we make images. Cue Tim Smith and Jalani Morgan, amongst many others (so far the ‘Community’ series in Photolife has also included Nadya Kwandibens, Annie Sakkab, Valerian Mazataud, Troy Shantz, Marta Iwanek, Kyler Zeleny, Nam Phi Dang, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Émilie Régnier, Vanessa Heins, Alia Youssef, Kali Spitzer and Yannick Anton, all of whom have reflected on their relationship with the communities they are photographing). “If you’re documenting the human condition, your love for it needs to be way higher than your love for photography,” says Morgan. Too often, people are looking to get ‘The Shot.’ Once they get it, they move on. While making a great image matters to me, it matters significantly less than the community recognizing themselves in it.”
Further Reading
Butet-Roch, L. (2018). “Crossing Divides”. British Journal of Photography. Issue 7874, pp. 91–94
Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London, UK: Zed Books.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing.
