Philadelphia-based, Shawn Theodore has been making his bones in street photography since 2008, but has quickly risen to prominence, joining the ranks in a larger tradition of black art, philosophy, spiritualism, and thought, rubbing various elbows with the likes of revolutionaries from photographer Frederick Douglas to his mentor, Jamel Shabazz. Shawn Theodore is a multidisciplinary artist in photography, video, and collage and as such his work is deeply-rooted in the ephemeral of black culture and the black collective consciousness, but is as equally critical as it is hopeful in offering a new trajectory, while exploring the fragmented African American and African diaspora identities.
You have accredited photographer Jamel Shabazz as a profound influence for your delve into street photography who also gave you high praise in 2016, noting the aforementioned quotation. Could you describe your connection to photography and how you were influenced by Shabazz and his techniques?
Yes, Jamel Shabazz will always have the honor of being my first mentor, but it’s certainly more complex than that. When I speak about our connection and relationship to people, many times people have said they’ve imagined that the two of us are always talking, particularly about our craft. The fact is, even though I approached him and asked for his guidance in photography, we’ve never really had moments where the camera or technical knowledge takes center stage. So, that said, there was a time, roughly eight years ago or so, I was looking at Shabazz’s portfolio that he always has on him. As I flipped page after page, he knew everyone’s story. He remembered every name. He recalled every location. It wasn’t about the camera, the film, or the lens. His passion was all about the people. That’s what my mentor taught me.
Your approach is to ask people on the street to be photographed and you say that you like to “disarm with love.” What has it been like to connect with everyday people and what have you taken away from the experience?
This gets to the heart of what my mentor taught me, which is to approach people with love. It seems like such a simple thing when I say it right now, but on the street, the camera can either be a wall or a door – not everyone is immediately receptive to the idea of a portrait by a stranger. It takes a certain innate knowledge to pick up on a person’s perception of you from body language, verbal cues, reading a smile properly. It takes time to know when and how to take a portrait of someone you’ve never met.
And, the thing to remember is that once you have this portrait, you have the moment that you and this person met —often for the first time, to show and share with the world. That’s a special bond. I don’t have many photos of the first time I met some of my closest friends but I have this ever-growing collection of portraits connecting me to thousands of people; some I know I’ll see again and there are those I’ll never see again. These moments really change you on an emotional level. You become more conscientious and considerate, keenly empathetic – to be more specific. Many of the people I’ve met while shooting street portraits have become dear and close friends over time.
One of your more recent projects, Future Antebellum, is a fascinating historicizing of the present in which you offer a trajectory for black America and the collective black consciousness, which delineates a ‘black apostasy.’ As the title would imply, the country is on the precipice of a kind of second civil war. Could you elaborate more on the thoughts and the intent that went into the imagining of this project?
It was April 2017 when I started placing my research into photographic scenes for Future Antebellum (FA). The thing that prompted me to consider making a body of work like this came from the overwhelmingly monolithic and overly optimistic interpretations of contemporary black culture as viewed through a narrow interpretive model of Afrofuturism. Not to say that I think Afrofuturism is flawed, but the proper dialogue, useful interpretation and (most importantly) a healthy critique of this specific philosophy isn’t happening broadly across the black community.
Black Apostasy, needed to have a ‘bookend’ so to speak. I chose two of the most popular hashtags being used in black social media discussions; ‘black boy joy’ which dismantles hypermasculine constructs, but infantilizes adult African American male happiness. In a similar fashion, ‘black girl magic’, posits itself around the vernacular use of ‘girl’ as a unifying, deeply encoded word employed by black women, yet the hashtagged phrase often falsely valorizes anything labeled ‘black and feminist’. Similarly, I took into account extremes like hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity with regard to the trajectories of conceptualizations of black personality traits, domestic behaviors, occupations, and physical appearances. I positioned these ideas as absolute principles to frame my process.
In your body of work, notably in The Avenues and Church of Broken Pieces you employ a vibrant use of color mirroring a kind of psychology embedded in the environment and the subject. In trying to steer away from some of the stereotypical images or “poverty porn” of older communities in wake of gentrification in cities like Philadelphia and Brooklyn, you open up a broader conversation of the role of the photographer, as well as others in their shaping of black imagery? Could you expand upon your process as a photographer in this age of #hashtags?
As important as hashtags may be, humanity, morals and ethics should be at the root of the work. With that said, the public figure who drives my thinking when I’m using a camera to create my art or to capture a moment, is Frederick Douglass. In the book Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American, one discovers his convictions regarding the importance of photography. As an early advocate and theorist of the technology and a student of its social impact of the power, and he posed for hundreds of different portraits. He was one of the first to consider the fixed image as a public relations instrument and believed fervently that he could represent the dignity of his race, inspiring others, and expanding the visual vocabulary of mass culture. I believe the power of portraying dignity begets dignity. I’m not advocating turning a blind eye to the ills of the world, but for the most part, what good springs forth from a vast majority of the photography that qualifies as ‘poverty porn’? What social changes occur? I believe people simply flip past these images, mostly unaffected. I hope to make work that halts people in a positive way.
What does ‘soul’ mean for the older communities? How is it changing and what does that mean for later generations?
‘Soul’ will always have the same roots; it has a recognizable sound, look, flavor, feel. I think what changes about ‘soul’ is how the younger generations add to ‘soul’, whether knowingly or not. What the younger generation calls ‘the wave’ is just the pulse of our collective. It’s the heartbeat that keeps us in groove. Soul needs the wave, and vice versa. Getting the older generation to make room for the wave, that’s the fight that defines the changes and shift in culture. Changes, but not a disconnect. I believe that the connection is stronger than ever. In times of rebellion, all we have is ‘soul’. In that sense, I believe soul is more of a place or a space than anything else.
Interview by Scarlett Davis
Scarlett Davis is a journalist specializing in arts. Shawn Theodore attended Tyler School of Art and received his BA in Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising from Temple University.
