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145 pages, Hardcover
First published February 4, 2021
’Rendering the Black body as a species body, encouraging Blackness which is defined as abject, threatening, servile, dangerous, dependent, irrational and infectious, finding yourself constrained in a way you did not ask for, in a way which could not possibly contain all that you are, all that you could be…’
’You know you can be free here. Where else can you guarantee Black people gather? This is ritual, shrine, ecstatic recital. With every visit, you are declaring that you love yourself.’
“Drowned by the screech-squeal-scream of get out of the car get out of the car get out of the car. They ordered you to the ground for symbolic purposes. Playing dead. You let out a skinny whimper sharp as a butter knife. You heard the sound rattle in your chest, pressing shut unserious features. Total eclipse. When you came to, you were beside yourself. This is what it means to die, you thought. Total eclipse. The sky turned black. Ha. You looked in one of their eyes and saw the image of the Devil. He had an index finger gripping the trigger, like he was holding on to a life-line. He looked scared, behind the crumpled forehead, the hard eyes, he looked scared. He looked scared of what he did not know, of what was different… You fit the profile. You fit the description. You don’t fit in the box he has squeezed you in. He looks scared, They all did. You wouldn’t accept their apologies, nor their extended hands, because even these are weapons in the darkness.”
Black people generally are subject to sociological organisation; subject to continuous discrimination on institutional and structural levels; rendered subject and servile and dangerous, criminal, broken. I ask those in front of the lens, those on the page, to bring themselves. Bring themselves whole. Bring themselves true. To bring their quiet, the rich interior lives which are often overlooked. To bring their joy. There’s power in this. Photography, like writing, is a memorial device, selecting a moment to be preserved, one which emerges from the flow of time but is imbued with all that we know, all that we feel. In this way, photography allows us to build our own archives. To assemble our own legacies. Speak our own truths. Our joy.
You hold off the tears until the train has pulled away, until you are stumbling down the platform. It is like the summer has been one long night and you have just woken up. It is like you both dived into the open water, but you have resurfaced with her elsewhere. It is like you formed a joint only to fracture, only to break. It is an ache you have not known and do not know how to name. It is terrifying. And yet, you knew what you were getting into. You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love? You knew what you were getting into, but taking the Underground, returning home with no certainty of when you will see her next, it is terrifying.
You lost her gaze for a moment and your breath quickened, as when a dropped call across a distance gains unexpected gravity. You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful. Love made you Black, as in, you were most coloured when in her presence. It was not a cause for concern; one must rejoice! You could be yourselves.
You’ve been wondering about your own relationship to open water. You’ve been wondering about the trauma and how it always finds its way to the surface, floating in the ocean. You’ve been wondering about how to protect that trauma from consumption. You’ve been wondering about departing, about being elsewhere. You have always thought if you opened your mouth in open water you would drown, but if you didn’t open your mouth you would suffocate. So here you are, drowning. You came here to ask for forgiveness. You came here to tell her you are sorry that you wouldn’t let her hold you in this open water. You came here to tell her the truth.