All right, let's do this. Peanut, if you're staying in the room, no talking. Hello and welcome to the Photo Work Podcast, the talky and touchy feely version of my book, 40 photographers on process and Practice. Hello, everyone. I'm Sascha Wolff, recording. Who.
Who is this?
Oh, boy, oh, boy. My troublemaker is here. It has been a while. That's Mr. Michael Chovindal. Hi, Michael.
Hello. I did promise everyone on my show that we would be back, so I kept that promise.
Here we are. I have to say, it's so great. I mean, obviously we. We talk irl, but it's really, really great to be back with you on our podcast, Platform Recording, having our pre record conversation about the episode. And yeah, we have a really amazing lineup, so we'll be able to get back to pumping out. Pumping out, whatever. Pumping out.
The factory is reopened. I've been shoveling coal into the.
Let me just say, I think the pumping out. I think the pumping out is. There's been so much rain up here, and I've been extremely preoccupied with my sump pump. So maybe that's where it's coming from. Pumping out the water. That's.
Oh, no.
Okay, we're gonna be able to get to putting out. God, pumping out. That is just so bizarre. Episodes every two weeks again with a great lineup. We have Justine Kurland coming up. Donna Lixenberg, Sage Sohair, Mary Frey. A lot of great artists coming up. And today's episode was with the wonderful Harlan Boseman. And we'll get to that in a minute. But anyway, yes, hello. And it's great to be back with you. It's great to be back with our audience. And I have to say that when I was recording with Harlan the other day, there's just like, for me, this is just a personal note, but. And I know having your own podcast, real photo show, you relate to this, I'm sure. Like, for me, when I'm engaged in one of the conversations while we're recording, it's weird how it's sort of different. I mean, I like to think I'm present when I'm talking to anyone or any artist, that I'm really engaged and I'm really listening. But there's something about the way we record where we're not in person and I'm just sort of quietly sitting at my desk in my office with my headphones on. Like, I am now talking to you. And I can close my eyes very often and just sort of really listen to what the person is saying. There's something absolutely about the fact that we're not in the same space that gives me a sort of unselfconscious ability to just be completely there in the listening mode. And I really miss that very particular space.
That it is a different way of engaging with people and we make, we all like guest and host, we make efforts to be undistracted while doing it and that really creates a whole different space. It is a very different way of engaging. And there's a bond that forms very quickly in these conversations.
Yeah, no, without a doubt. We have some guests tell us sometimes they'd much rather record in person and I have to explain to them why that's actually not, in my opinion the better choice. That I just need them to trust me. That in person is a completely different, as I said, more self conscious experience where you have to sort of look at the person and you know, body language. Body language, everything. Of course. Yeah, yeah. You know, we turn off all our devices, obviously you sort of lock yourself into your recording space. Everything else is shut off. And you know, the only thing that ever sort of distracts me is, you know, I know who that's gonna be. I know either the happening or the fear of Peanut barking, but others other than that, and she's behind me right now, so anything could happen. But usually when I record conversations with guests, Peanut is in exile. But yeah, when I record the intros with you, she's usually here as she is right now. That's. Anyway, well, let's get to. I think we have one really fun announcement.
Yes, one great announcement. CPW has their 2025 portfolio reviews and they've extended the deadline to June 21st. Not only is this a fantastic annual review, but there's a special guest this year and that is our very own Sasha Wolf will be one of the reviewers.
Yes, I will. And actually I did do it last year also. And I, you know, obviously CPW and I organization and the people who work there, particularly the people who work there and I are, you know, a very close working relationship and friendships with various folks there. And it's a pleasure.
It's a pretty good lineup.
Yeah, it's a good lineup of reviewers. It's a pleasure to do anything with those guys. And last year was so wonderful. It was one of my favorite portfolio review experiences. So I urge people, if you're in New York City, it's a really easy trip. Yes, it really is.
It's actually a lovely drive.
It's a lovely drive. You can easily take a bus. You can take A train that doesn't go into Kingston, so you'd have to get picked up at the train station or something. But that's not a big deal. So it's very short, under two hours to get there. So anyway, please, if you've been thinking about it, apply. It's just a really lovely experience being in that beautiful space with the wonderful people. It's very, very beautiful.
New space.
Beautiful new space. Oh, and let me just also say I'm not going to list all of them because there are a whole bunch of exhibitions right now, but they just opened their summer exhibitions and they are incredible. I was there for the opening the other night. So I also urge people to come see the new CPW space that is filled with incredible exhibitions right now, including a huge collage show that Justine Kurland and her co curator Marina Chow put together. It's just an incredible immersive experience. Big Larry Fink show. Anyway, a lot to see, so come on up to CPW and you will be rewarded with good vibes and great work.
Yes. And I failed to mention the dates of the actual reviews, which will be July 18th and 19th. And again the deadline has been extended to June 21st at 11:59pm Beautiful.
Thank you, Michael. So, yeah, getting back to today's show, what did you think? We haven't had a chance to talk about it yet.
Well, Harlan is actually a friend of mine, so I really enjoyed listening to Harlan speak with you. There are two big bodies of work you talk about the work you did about Elaine, called out the E, the town of Elaine, and of course, failure to appear. And you know, the way Harlan thinks about the people he photographs and the responsibility he has as a photographer is just bar none. You know, he's got an incredible ethical foundation and that is very clear in this episode. And he just thinks a lot about the importance, the influence and the impact of his work and what it means to the people that he's photographing. And that is really admirable, really respectable.
Yeah. And that's a big part of our conversation. So I think that anyone who has a practice where, I mean, hopefully this conversation will be really interesting to anyone because it really does touch on ethics and morality and a lot about process, but particularly anyone who has a practice that involves other communities, either their own or outside of their own, I think we'll find this episode particularly interesting. And I loved talking with Harlan, who I also work with, and it was really wonderful. Well, Michael, why don't we get to it, if you don't mind, Please Take it away.
My pleasure. And here is your conversation with Harlan Boseman.
Harlan Bozeman, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It's so great to have you on. I'm so thrilled to get to sort of talk with you in this space and give you a platform to talk about a lot of things about you and your process that I find really fascinating. And I think our audience will as well. So thank you so much for being with me today.
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
So, Harlan, as we start every show with the artist's sort of journey and biography, we'll do that today. So please tell everyone about yourself, where you grew up, how you got into photography, where you went to school, what you studied, etc.
Sure. My name is Harlan Boseman. I grew up kind of all over. I was a military kid then I also moved around for my mother's job. But I like to say that I grew up in the Midwest and also the South. I'm currently based in central Arkansas. And photography came a little bit later in life for me. Around the age of 22, my undergrad Bachelor's degree was in journalism. And then I began making pictures when I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago. And really my introduction into photography was walking on the street making candid pictures. I was doing that for about three years before I realized that I wanted to make more long term project based work. And that's when I started going out to South Carolina on the island that my family is from. And that was kind of the start towards my practice as it is today, in 2018. Yeah, I'll just end there.
Well, I'm going to, I'm going to dig in more. So people always come on and sort of, I often hear this. And then I just started making pictures. Sort of throwaway line, but, you know, how does that happen? I mean, you know, what compelled you, that may be an overstatement of a word, but what compelled you to start making pictures when you were in la and it sounds like you were sort of doing street photography. And so I'm curious, you know, did you have any reference for that? Were you looking at photographs? Were you like, did you find some book of street photography? And thought I this is really interesting. And what was your mindset in terms of, you know, seriousness of intention when you were doing that?
Yeah, there was not much intention early on. And being getting into street photography, I'd like to think is random, but it probably stems from my upbringing. I grew up skateboarding. I was very interested in music. I was in a Band in college, playing the drums. And I was also taking some photo based courses in undergrad, like photojournalism courses, where we were kind of writing along to images and not really making our own pictures. But a visual was a big part of our assignments in that course. And so when I moved to Los Angeles, I knew I wanted to take up photography. I just didn't know what my area within that medium would be. At the time I was living in Koreatown, which is one of the few kind of urban areas within the city of la. And I was able to just walk around a lot and just make these candid pictures. And I guess I was looking at a lot of street photographers before me. I was really interested in like Garry Winogrand and also image makers who had bodies of work that were so different from one another, like Marielle and Mark. But then I was also familiarizing myself with more conceptual image based artists like Jeff Wall. So I was looking at kind of anything and everything, but a lot of black and white early street photography work. And so really for me, street photography was a way for me to build up this sense of fearlessness that I think really helped contribute to my early, the pictures I was making early on. Because walking the streets of Los Angeles, you do need to have some sort of fearlessness in you when you're, when you're making photos. I think making street photography, street pictures anywhere, it helps. And so that's kind of my introduction. There wasn't really a formal education that I had in learning the camera. It was a lot of mistakes, mistakes. And the first year I was working digitally and then I quickly switched to film and that became a whole, a whole cycle of like going through and educating myself on how to work with film, how to develop my own film. And that really got me interested in the medium of photography. And I quickly increased my format and went to 6x9 and 6 by 4.5 and then I settled on 6 by 7. So that was like a quick three years of just getting new cameras, experimenting, figuring out what I like and what I don't like. But in regards to intention, there was not much early on, like I said, I was really just being in the right place at the right time. And that caused me to not really understand how to talk about my work. I didn't have a background within fine art and I didn't know many artists at the time. Even living in Los Angeles, I was going to art openings and kind of getting established with the art world, I guess. But at the same time there, there also Wasn't a lot of photo in 2016 that I was able to see in Los Angeles. There's maybe a couple galleries. So a lot of it was online. A lot of images I was looking at was online. And then also learning just how to work with the camera was a lot of self guided education. On YouTube.
You said that, you know, doing street work requires a certain amount of fearlessness and I assume you mean that way of sort of the brashness that is required to a certain degree. I mean, it's funny because some people I know, you know, focus on street work because they're quite shy and they don't want to engage. They're more comfortable just, you know, I hate to use this word, but for lack of a better word, sort of stealing an image as they walk down the street covertly to some degree. But I also understand what you're saying that or I think you're saying that that also really requires a certain amount of chutzpah. Do people know that word anyway? And I wonder if you, you know, read any texts about or read any interviews with someone like Garry Winogrand or anyone else who personifies that type of artist or did you just sort of figure it out on your own?
Yeah, I, I want to say I figured out on my own, but I was inspired by like early videos from people like Gary Winogrand or Lee Friedlander. Just seeing how they would work and how they talked about their work and viewed their practice. I think, yeah, I think I was really interested in capturing spontaneous moments, but also not really. It was also moving in a way, kind of lazy. There wasn't much dialogue or relationship being built and there wasn't really a commitment that I had to have. It was just kind of fleeting in a way. It's something that I, I look back on and I'm, I'm happy for those moments because I learned a lot in those moments. But it's, it's not how I would ever want to continue working because I don't think there's, there's much you can say about that work beyond, beyond it being like these anonymous, candid moments. Finding language for how I talk about my work really convinced me to leave street photography kind of behind.
Yeah, you really have moved into a very different way of working. And I'll just say now 10 minutes in more or less that you and I work together. So I do have particular insight, I guess, into your way of working and thinking about making work. I represent you very proudly. So let's talk about this next step. Where you go to graduate school, how you made that decision, where you went, and this next artistic chapter. Tell us about that.
Yeah. The decision to go to graduate school was kind of sparked by a mentor of mine in Los Angeles at the time who inspired me to begin a project that I planned on doing maybe about six months later, but instead starting it then for an application towards graduate school. And that's when I began going out to my family's island in South Carolina called Wadmalaw. I knew I wanted to go to graduate school maybe a year prior leading up to that, but I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't know anyone who received an MFA before. My parents definitely didn't go to art school. And not having a bfa, I felt in a way behind. I felt like there was this kind of in the know information that I just didn't have. And I didn't really know what art school was supposed to be like. I didn't know how critiques were held, I didn't know what reviews looked like. I didn't know how much mentorship I should be expecting. So grad school was kind of a two part process. I went to Arizona State for one semester and then I transferred to the University of Arkansas. And after transferring to Arkansas, that really gave me the time to expand upon what I really wanted to do, which was long form projects that deal with communities. It just so happened to be at the time of COVID that I went to Arkansas. I moved there in February of 2020 and really I didn't know what I was going to do for a couple months leading up, leading up to classes starting. And it was around the time of July that I found out about the history of the red summer of 1919 from auditing a course at the time with my mentor, now really good friend, Zora J. Murph. And it was in this course that I was auditing that I found out about this history. And I was shocked that I didn't know about it. As someone who grew up in Arkansas, I was shocked that I didn't know about the labor issues within Arkansas or also just the red summer of 1919 in general. And that's when I found out about Elaine. And it was this specific summer where you had black men returning from World War I with a newfound sense of pride, having just fought for this country, only to return to a land that was not really ready for them. And so you had examples of racial violence all throughout the country, from Chicago to D.C. to Omaha, Nebraska, over 20 examples. And the Main catalyst for each of these examples of racial violence was white mob violence. And in Elaine's specific case, this was the worst example. Throughout that summer in terms of lives lost, no one really knows how many people were killed in Elaine. And this is all finding out about all of this information before I started school. And so by the time I started classes, I knew Elaine was on my head. I just didn't really know when or if I should go out there. It took me about a little over two months to decide that I should make that drive. It's about five hours away at the time. And starting grad school for me was really going to classes on Zoom that first year. And so my introduction into an art program was kind of like being on my own and just going to classes and via my cell phone or a laptop away from home. And really what I was expecting from graduate school, this was a time where I needed to, I needed to take advantage. This being like my second round after transferring from Arizona State, I looked at this as really, there's no plan B. Like, this is my only option. This is all, this is all I have going for me. And so when else in my life will I get three years to dedicate to my practice? Three years of pure, purely being driven by my motivations and by this project. And so it seemed like the right time to start it. And I didn't know how long it would go for. It's still continuing on. The decision to go to grad school was really because I wanted the mentorship. There was so much I didn't know and so much that YouTube or photo forms online could teach me. And I also wanted to be around other artists. I wanted to be around other people who are making work in different ways and have those discussions and those conversations. And I also wanted to build some sense of community because it felt very lonely being a photographer in la, not knowing any other artists or. Yeah. So moving to Arkansas was a lot. It was returning to the south, returning to my childhood home, then also returning to academia after being out of school for so long. But it was the right place at the right time. And looking back, it was probably the best decision I ever made.
So I just want to fill in a few things. For folks, the program, the MFA program at Arkansas is a three year program, as you sort of mentioned, which is not that common, but really wonderful in terms of really being seeped in, a full and long experience and really an incredibly distinguished faculty. I don't know if you want to mention some of the faculty that were.
There at the time, I was very lucky and fortunate to have amazing photo faculty. Zora J. Murph, Raina Young, Aaron Turner and Rebecca Drolin were my faculty at the time. Three out of four of those people are no longer going to be there this fall. So there's been quite, quite the turnaround. But it was a really, really good, good time period to be at that school between 2020 and 2023. And yes, three year program for me was the way to go. I needed the extra time. The idea of producing a thesis show and doing as much as I did in graduate school within two years seems impossible looking back. So it was, it was great.
Yeah. It's just something for folks who are listening, who might be thinking about graduate school to think about that there is that option. I wish I could list the schools that had three year programs, but I don't know them off the top of my head. But it is, it is an option. It's a different type of experience. Obviously.
I would also look at state schools as well in general because those are usually the ones that have, are fully funded and have generous stipends. I would take a look at this.
No, thank you. Absolutely. And you know, it's obviously, you know, very difficult to be going to do something for one key reason being community and then, you know, arriving at the beginning of the pandemic and having to take classes online. You know, I sort of wonder in some ways if without that you might not have had the time to start this project on Elaine that's been sort of your anchor of work for the past however many years it is now five years or something, which, you know, it's sort of interesting the way these things shake out. I also want to just mention, just make clear that Elaine is in Arkansas. Elaine, Arkansas. So although you had a very long drive from I guess northern Arkansas to more southern Arkansas.
Yeah, it's.
Yeah. And as you said, there had been this just really ghastly, horrible historic massacre in Elaine, Arkansas, the Black residents in 1919. And that was the catalyst, this thing. You wanted to explore the legacy of that. So you took your first trip to Elaine, Arkansas and pick it up from there. What was it like to arrive in a place where you didn't know anyone and you had this, you were being internally driven by this desire to sort of explore something photographically that happened 100 years before. How do you do that? Like, what are you thinking about and you know, when you're on your way and what are you thinking about when you get there and how do you Start.
Yeah, just going back to what you. The first thing you said. Yeah. If Covid wasn't happening that far first year, I. I don't think it would have been as successful starting out. I think, you know, there was some preliminary research that I did online, which is what anyone can really find on Elaine, which mostly has to do with the massacre. But to understand what Elaine was like in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, decades after this massacre, you're not going to find anything. You're going to have to go down there and speak with people. And so that first initial visit, I was. I was pretty nervous. I didn't know anybody. I didn't reach out to anyone. All I knew is that I wanted to go down there and see what the town was like. I knew it was small. I didn't know it was as racially segregated as it was along Main Street. And anyone can easily see that as soon as you get there. Elaine is one of those towns you can drive around in five minutes, there's no street lights. They just got a Dollar General in 2019, and that was a really big deal. But that first visit, I'm going down there with my film cameras. And then I also brought my digital camera. And from the very first visit, I went to the basketball court. It's really the only place where you're going to find people outside. And it's also one of the few places that is really meant for kids, like this is their area. And so that very first visit, while I brought out my digital camera, I put it in the hands of the kids. Actually, I didn't. They asked for it. And so that kind of sparked this. That simple exchange just sparked some sense of engagement early on and going back and returning. And I was lucky at the time because I could go back consecutive, you know, consecutive day, or I could go back multiple days in the week. And at the time, and really, I always brought my digital camera. And they were using it from the very beginning. And I started bringing back prints that I was. That I was using in critiques and throughout school. And so every person, you know, almost five years later, every person that is featured within out the E has their print. They have some sort of 5 by 7, 16 by 20, some size version of their print. And that helped out a lot early on. But making work in Elaine was very similar to making work in South Carolina. It was kind of this domino effect where someone would introduce me to somebody and then they would have me go talk to someone else. And then slowly I was meeting people that were part of this community, elders and people that actually knew a lot of information that a lot of these kids really didn't. And I found out early on that a lot of the kids I was photographing alongside didn't know about the history of Elaine. And that kind of shocked me a little bit as well. I mean, I can't say I was surprised that an 8 year old didn't know, but to know that like 16 and 17 year olds had no idea was pretty alarming. But it also showed me a lot of the inequities that these kids have to deal with. Some that they know about, some not so much. Schools closed in 2005 in Elaine. And so when that happened, most of the working professionals in the town left. Your doctors, your lawyers, your local educators. And so Elaine is about a population of around 500 people. And so everyone knows everybody, everyone's in everyone's business. It's truly probably the closest community I've ever been around. And so when you have a close community like that, it could be really great for making this kind of work. You're going by showing people's prints and then they see their cousin or their daughter and immediately they open up to you and they tell you about their life. But a lot of the questions I was asking early on wasn't really about the massacre at all. It was about, you know, what do you do for work, you know, how are you affording where you live? Do most people own their homes or do people go for fun? And then you quickly realize that Elaine is not the place for really any of those things. In fact, if you want to discover opportunities or leisure or have like any leisure activity, you have to leave Elaine. And so most people work outside of the town. Besides the few people who work in like maybe the Dollar General or within like the city, the local city hall, which is a very few amount of people. Most people are leaving Elaine. And so when that happens, the money leaves the town and doesn't really come back. And so that's also a big conversation to be had. As well as land ownership, a lot of people don't own their homes in Elaine. And there's also not really infrastructure to build homes on. In fact, if you wanted to move to Elaine, you couldn't. It's not possible for you. And also, if you wanted fresh food, you would have to leave and go to Helena as well. So Helena, about 35 minutes away, is like the big town in Elaine. Sorry, I don't want to go on a tangent here because I feel like.
No, no, that's okay, I'm completely mesmerized. So you are building these relationships. You're making photographs. How are you thinking about what this project is? Because you're motivated originally by the history of this place. Then you get there, and I'm sure there's very few remaining signs, literally markers, of its history. It's not like it was frozen in time. It's a place that has continued on with people being born, people passing away, people getting married, people falling in love, you know, et cetera. So how do you think about what drew you there versus what is actually there now? And as you said, many young people don't even know of the history. So how do you think about the project as you're dealing with this reality of a living, breathing place that shows few outward signs or obvious signs of the very thing that drew you there in the first place?
Yeah, you know, I think it was the lack of information around this town, the lack of any sort of federal or state archive, and then also the lack of acknowledgment from my state, from Arkansas, around the massacre. And that's what drew me there. And then what kept me going back was really the people in this town, but also trying to understand how people in this town feel about it. And there's people there who want to talk about the massacre, People like James White or Fiora Williams or Jermaine Jimerson. And then there's also people who don't really want to talk about it, like the local police chief who is a black man, who just thinks, you know, we should all get over it. And then there's also people on the south side of Main street who just think it's fake news. And the numbers and the reality of what happened there is embellished, and that's a reality. There's many people who feel that way. And so finding that out in month one, that's when I realized, like, this is bigger than just the massacre or the history of what happened there. This is something that's continuing on, that lingers in people's lives. Maybe not daily, but it's something that hasn't really left. The social, economic conditions of a place like Elaine, you know, have not really improved much since, like, the 1920s, since the era of sharecropping. And so thinking about the. The actual realities today and only knowing this from, like, firsthand accounts from people, that's what made me want to keep going back. And it's changed how. How I've thought about this project over the years. New information that I've Learned changes how I feel about this work. What I knew in year two, I didn't know in year one. Like, I didn't know certain things around who the land ownership in this town and who really owns what. And really, it's like maybe three white families who. Who own the majority of the land in Phillips County. And I also didn't know that Phillips county is one of the few counties in Arkansas that you can't look up the land records online. It's in the county courthouse, which is the Same courthouse where 400 people were arrested after the massacre. It's changed a lot around, like, what I'm interested in. I feel like each year I'm interested in something new in relation to the town. But at the same time, my methods haven't really changed. I'm still going back, I'm still returning. I'm still making pictures. And really what it looks like to make it work in Elaine is just being present and just kind of hanging out. So I like to think that the images aren't really what the work of this about. It's about this collective engagement, how this town is reckoning with this history, but also building relationships and contributing. Contributing to supporting justice and dignity and agency for people that have really never received that recognition. I don't claim to be able to fix or transform the realities of this place, but if I can use these images to bring attention on this place and also to try and help improve someone's life in a way that's actually tangible is really important to me. And that's like. I think this project can be a vehicle towards building something, whether that's resources, visibility, or also connections.
Your commitment to the people of Elaine and their circumstances that are extremely challenging is, I think, extremely moving, admirable, and complicated because you are in the fine art world, and this project is in many ways a social justice project. And I think, as we all know, there isn't a easy overlap between social justice and the realities of the art ecosystem. They. Although art, obviously, throughout history has been a very important part of social justice in many very moving ways, it's not always an easy balance. And I'd like to just say, and you jump in whenever you want, but that you have made the decision that I, as your representative in the art world who sells your work, completely support to not sell this work to individual collectors. We make this work. And this is something that we've gone back and forth on a little bit in conversation, not because we've disagreed, but just in terms of, you know, trying to figure out what actually is morally and practically doable. But really the idea is to reserve this work for institutions such as museums. And very sort of obvious, I think, receptacle for the work is a book. And so we are talking about making that happen. So it's. Obviously, it's tricky. You know, it's tricky to be in the space that you're in. And I wonder how you sort of think about that or if it. I mean, I guess I know the answer to this, but I guess I'm just asking you to tell folks who are listening just a little bit. You don't have to pry open your soul, but just a little bit about the decision to not commodify this work.
Yeah, it's not something I knew in early on, like my first, second, or even third year of grad school. I think it's. It's something I really started thinking about in the summer of 2023 while I was at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where I was having a lot of these conversations as to where. Where I want this work to be and how I want it to be presented. You know, I think a lot about other artists before me, especially artists who make work dealing with very specific communities, whether big or small. And whenever I look at that work, I always wonder how this place or this community improved from that work. Have they improved? And there's. There's so many different bodies of work I can think about. But a big inspiration early on was Imperial Courts by Dana Luxembourg. That was, like, one of those books, along with the Notion of Family by Latoya Ruby Frazier that I showed kids and Elaine early on in, like, the first couple months. And I always thought about that. That specific area and Watts, because Dana had been making work there for, like, well over a decade. And I. I wonder how those images might have helped improve that community, but, you know, not even singling out that specific body of work. I think about that with a lot of photographers who make pictures of people in specific communities, and I wonder how if they're really ever even changing anything and if that's even a concern for them. And I know the answer is it's not for most people, but I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to, like, change the blueprint for how people should make work. I just know very specific examples of bodies of work that make me feel kind of icky inside. And I did not want to do that with this work. And so I knew about two years ago that this work was not going to be for sale. To private collectors, period. Out the E is about confronting a history of racial violence that continues to shape this small community. And so I refuse to contribute to any sort of commodification of black pain, particularly when it benefits certain individuals detached from that place. And so when I think about all of the instances where the visual language of Black death or despair becomes, in a way, sort of currency for. For cultural enrichment, I'm not interested in repeating that. And whether that's the intention of the artist or not. Like, I know once that work gets sold, you don't really have control over it. And I need to. I need to have control over where. Over where this work ends up, because it's not. It's not me in the work. I'm not in these photographs. And so if I want to be able to. To look back 10 years, you know, 20 years from now, I want to feel good about what I did. And then I also want institutions to understand that supporting this work is more than just supporting the images. You're actually going to be. Well, this is a conversation that you of. I have had, and it's for something later, but it is. It is also going to be supporting the town by supporting the work. And that's for, like, another conversation. But it's really important to me. It's really important to me. I don't want this work to end up, you know, in someone's kitchen, you know, that has nothing to do with Elaine and will never go to a place like Elaine, but they see a portrait of a young black child, and so they must have it inside of their house. I'm not interested in that, I guess, like, I'm not trying to, like, put up a stand or.
Well, this is how you feel, right? I'm just going to. Yeah, I know you're not trying to tell other people how to go about their artistic practice, but these are your. This is your blueprint. You have certain guidelines for yourself, and you know what you need to do in order to feel right about this very complex and sensitive project. One thing I just want to sort of point out, you know, I don't know whether you want to jump in here or not, but I think where it gets tricky. Not about buying work and all that. That's not what I'm referring to here, but just about whether or not the people in the photographs benefit. What I would say is that that is extremely difficult. Right. Like, unless you're talking about a direct financial return, and that is something you are thinking about and you and I are talking about. And as you said, that's conversation can happen when you come back on the podcast because it's something we're actively trying to figure out. But, you know, how do the people benefit? And I will be having Dana Lixenberg on the podcast in a few weeks, so.
Oh, wow, crazy time.
And what I would say, just to add some, to open this up a little bit, I guess, is I would say that what's extremely important to remember is that it's difficult as it is to provide a sort of direct, tangible benefit for the subjects that you're photographing. There can be very clear, tangible benefit. Tangible may be too strong a word. But the benefit is often really to the people who see the work, because it is the people who see the work whose heart is open to people and communities that are different from theirs. If the work is complex and caring and generous, that is transmitted then to the viewer. And so, you know, what I would say with a project like Imperial Courts is that I don't know what the benefit was for the people who were the subjects of the work, which I actually think is really an extraordinary project. But I say that as someone who feels very fortunate to have had some experience getting to know the subjects through these extremely beautiful and dignified and respectful pictures, which is what I think as a white person who grew up on the east coast in a city who has spent very little time sometime, but very, very little time in the course of my life in very impoverished black communities in the South. I've been through some of those areas in my journeys through the country, but I have not sat in those areas for long periods of time. I'm not from there. I'm, you know, what would I be doing there for a long period of time? And so my learning comes from work like yours, and that's extremely important to me as a person. It's why I love the work that I do. It's why I support and champion the type of work that I do, as Sasha Wolff projects as a photography representative and dealer, is because my life is so enriched, my sense of the world and my ability to relate has been so impacted, I think, in a positive way, hope, by spending long, thoughtful and careful periods of time with the type of work you're making. So I would just say that it's really important to remember. And of course, you can't control everyone's response. And there are going to be people who are drawn to or fascinated by, as you said, black pain in a way that feels unhealthy, inappropriate, bad, et cetera. But for all of those people, there are also people who are growing. Right. So it's a complicated thing. Right?
That's.
That's all I'm saying. It's a very. But it is, I think, what we hope for when we champion the type of work you're making.
Yeah, that was well said. It's very. It's very complicated, I think, when it comes to ownership of the photographs. Like, when I. When I think about ownership, I just get very. I get very sensitive about the work. And. And that's not to say people don't own the work. A bunch of people in Elaine have the work, but it's.
You're the protector of that archive.
Yeah, yeah. And that's something I kind of failed to mention earlier is that, you know, in the first three years of making this work, I did view this as an ongoing archive that was supposed to be housed in Elaine inside of their civil rights museum. And in the last two years, I've since learned that museum is not going to be happening. But the idea still sticks with me. Like this idea of an archive that in order to see in its entirety, you would have to go to Elaine to see it. And so the idea of individual people being able to own parts of this archive, I'm not interested in. But you're right. No. Once the work is out in the world, there's little I can do about it. And I still think it's very important for other people to gain some sense of awareness or being able to reflect or learn something new from. From viewing the work. I think that's very important. That's why I wanted to be within institutions all around the world, because Elaine is not. Elaine isn't that specific. There's many Elaine's everywhere, even outside of this country. So I'm thinking of this one project as an example that could apply to so many different communities. And I think that's what's. What's really important for me personally, I don't want to look back and think about how this body of work helped, you know, accelerate my career or improve my career or put me into, like, the next step of my career. And it didn't help improve anything. Any lane. I would look at that as not being successful. I wouldn't say a failure because the work exists, but I don't think it would be a successful project if some aspect of Elaine life doesn't improve for some people. I don't think like it's going to. You know, I don't. I don't think it's going to change like the structural problems in Elaine. But I do think, like through fiscal sponsorship, through like a nonprofit or, you know, doing something along with Mayor Hicks, like, I think like a fund could be built that could go towards something in Elaine, whether that's an actual brick and mortar building or it could go towards like a fund that helps people when they need it, because people do need help. Yeah, still. Still thinking about that. And that's also a conversation we should have later, but when it's more fleshed out. But no, you're. You're absolutely right. Well, I know I don't want the work to be in private collections. I do understand that, you know, public eyes on the work will. Will just help. It'll help this place in some sort of way. More people knowing about this place and its history is an improvement in my eyes.
So moving on from Elaine and the name of the project is out the E. Let's talk about what else was going on when you were in graduate school, which was obviously not that long ago. So it's still going on now, which is failure to appear. I'm thinking of specifically, but there's other projects you're working on and how you made this turn toward what I hope you'll describe to our listeners of very different way of working, Some of the very same concerns and preoccupations as far as content or meaning and concept, but incredibly different forms. So tell folks about that.
Yeah. While in graduate school, I was in school full time, going to Elaine to make work, but also doing some assignments that were very random in northwest Arkansas. But the assignments would take me throughout the south in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma. And at the midpoint of my graduate program, I dismissed the idea of including my work in Elaine in my thesis exhibition. And I thought it was an obvious decision given that Arkansas public schools do not educate students on the history of Elaine or the red summer of 1919. I knew the response to my work was positive in Elaine, but I also thought it was very expected that I would be showing that work. I was also a little bit in my feelings around my thesis year of grad school. I thought the massacre and its legacy was what people were attracted to, while the community that I photographed alongside remained in a way overlooked. At least that's the impression I was getting from a lot of my critiques. And so as a result of some aggravation and some academic self motivated moral pressure, I needed to make work about black personhood and how my proximity to black death was altering my psyche and how I felt. And so that kind of forced my transition into collage. Also, it was inspired by a shift in my relationship to the images and to my own archive. Throughout grad school. Was also returning to the south and returning to my childhood home. And inside of that childhood home, I was surrounded by a bunch of images and ephemera that were from my parents, from my parents former life well before I was born. And so I was kind of collecting a lot of this material around the time of my first year making work in Elaine. And I was just saving it on hard drive. I was scanning a lot of stuff that I didn't really know what I would do with it. And so I was interested in making work that wasn't tied to a location, that wasn't tied to any specific history, because I thought that was in a way, kind of limiting myself. But I also wanted to make work about my recent travels, about past work I had made in South Carolina and my current experiences making work in Elaine, which was filled with a lot of physical and emotional labor. I was noticing a lot of similarities in making work in Alabama and Mississippi and in South Carolina. I was noticing similarities in the stories I was being told from different generations of people. And I wanted to make work that in a way, framed a collective experience that people, black people can relate to. So making work that dealt with the expansive movement of the Great Migration, making work that considered black Americans role in the US Military. And I also. I was making work that was including a lot of stuff that I was dealing with on the road, whether that was in Elaine or other communities as well. And at the same time dealing with these feelings, I was also dealing with these objects from my childhood, this ephemera from my parents that I was newly discovering. And so I needed to find a way to reconcile all of this material. And for me, I don't consider myself a collage artist by any means. By the time my thesis show opened, you know, it was material it was sourced from, material I was dealing with for at least three years at that point that I was just kind of sitting on, trying to figure out where it fit in. So failure to appear by working with collage and photography was a way for me to attempt to revise my history by producing artwork that functions to encourage everyday acts of refusal and that reflects the precarious state of black life then and now. And so looking back at the Gullah Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, thinking about the incidents surrounding the Red Summer, and just two years later in Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, thinking about more modern histories like the Move bombing in the 1980s in Philadelphia. You know, there's so many. There's so many examples of black people succeeding in solitary, and that disrupts the establishment.
So let me ask you about. I understand from what you just said why you started, you know, working in this new form of collage. You and I have had this conversation. I find a lot of the collage work very opaque. I don't know if it's because I'm white, if it's because I'm from the north, if it's whatever, a million different reasons. I don't know. I'm just being very candid. If, you know, I'm missing clear references in the work or if the work is indeed quite opaque. You know, out the E in that type of documentary work, of course, all work is all good work. All good photographic artwork is filled with ambiguity. Right. That's what makes it art. And not a postcard. It is multilayered. So I don't want to suggest that out the E is easy to read. That would be a ridiculous statement. But there's certainly way more things. I think if two people were looking at a picture, we would agree that we see, even as far as concept or feeling, then looking at the work from Failure to Appear, and. And I wonder, A, if you agree with that, and B, if you do, how does an artist get comfortable with the idea that the work they're creating is quite challenging to read?
Yeah, I do agree. I definitely agree. You know, I think it's been a shift within my practice making work and Failure to Appear. I think, for me, I wasn't. I wasn't interested in making work that aligned with any specific history, and I wanted to make work that. It's kind of hard to decipher the history or the identity that the work might align with.
Is that an emotional pushback, do you think, against the out the E work? I mean, I just wonder if you were in some ways emotionally exhausted from the literacy of out the E, and so you went into a space that was sort of more emotionally guarded. And at some point in every podcast episode, I think I start playing the role of psychiatrist. This is that moment. I just wonder if, you know, whenever I'm looking at the two bodies of work, and you've made more than two bodies of work, by the way. But just we're highlighting these two for the sake of the podcast, and I often am looking at them sort of side by side for reasons that have to do with my own organization, quite literally in representing you. But, you know, I'm Often really struck by that. It feels like you were making out the E and you were sort of yelling at people like, pay attention to this. And then failure to Appear just feels so private and guarded and made by someone who is exhausted trying to, you know, jump up and down and communicate something and is in a sort of more careful, defensive crouch. Maybe.
Yeah, you're not. You're not too far off. I would. I would think that I needed to make Failure to Appear because there were things I wanted to address about making work in Elaine that I couldn't bring into out the E. I felt like it wasn't appropriate. And so whether that's like referencing my own personal physical burnout or also, you know, leaning more into speculative fiction and thinking about legacies and histories that maybe I don't personally know, but some. Some black person might. Or it might apply to somebody and. And then also thinking about those objects that I was kind of re. Familiarizing myself with in my. In my childhood home. So, like, using all of those things, I. I did want to make work. That. That kind of spoke to the experience of making work in Elaine. Yeah, I. I guess it wasn't like I was very prideful of out the E early on. I knew its importance to me, but at the same time, I felt like maybe not everyone understood what this work was supposed to be about or what it could be or the significance of the work, which sounds a bit cocky, but I truly believe it's very significant, the project. And so it was a reaction to a lot of those things. But also, yeah, also being in school and feeling like I wasn't really in an environment that supported out the E. Definitely from my photo faculty, but, like, just being within academia along within, like the scheduling of academia, like the certain questions I was getting early on would frustrate me. Even at the end, like towards graduation, I was getting frustrated by how some people viewed that work and what it was supposed to be like. And so I. I knew. I knew I didn't want to show that work in my thesis show. And so I don't know if Failure to Appear would have been such a specific project if it wasn't for those circumstances. But I wanted to lean more into the imaginary than fact. And so that's kind of where I was thinking about failure to appear. Yeah, I didn't want to think about a specific event, specific history. I wanted to lean more into legacies that might have happened or might not have happened, but it can contribute towards a collective black identity, if there ever is one. So that's what I was interested in and using images I made in Arkansas and throughout the south, images from South Carolina. There's a lot of different images that are within that body of work. Yeah.
Sort of reminds me of like a writer, a nonfiction writer who sort of spends years, very emotionally challenging place writing a book, a nonfiction book. And, you know, the pressure that comes with that to the subjects, of course, and then being exhausted and, you know, writing a book of poetry after or something.
Right. That's a great comparison.
Yeah. Well, I could keep talking to you for the rest of the day because I love talking to you and I love you and I learn so much. I think people might wonder if the conversation is sort of sincere, if it's someone I know well or whose work I know really well and know the answer to things. But the truth is that even though we work together and I'm. We're having a real conversation and I'm. I'm learning things because each conversation that we have is new and enriching in its own right. I hope people enjoyed listening to you the way I have and look forward to having you back on the podcast hopefully when the book is published.
Definitely.
I am a big, a big booster for this being a book and something we're really anxious to get done anyway. Harlan Boseman, thank you so much for talking with me today. I send you a big hug and I will talk to you soon.
Thank you so much, Sasha. I really appreciate it. Talk soon.
Okay, bye.
Bye.
Photo Work with Sasha Wolff is a production of the Photo Work Foundation. Executive producer is Sasha Wolff and the associate producer is Taylor Selsbach. The show is is also produced and edited by me, Michael Chovendalt in a real photo show. Music is by J. Walter Hawks. If you like the show and wish to find out more about the foundation, please visit PhotoArch foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.