magazine girls, part 2

As it turns out, More did give Teruko a solo cover, subscription version only:

They're both stunning, but I love this one. Congrats, Teruko!!

(Update 5/1/05: I was in Target yesterday and glimpsed a cover of More with no Teruko at all—just the other model. What's up with that?!?!)

And for those of you posting your congratulations to Deb, did you also know she was awarded both a Guggenheim and Fletcher grant this year (http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/469)?

I also have to give a shout-out to poet Harryette Mullen, whom I don't personally know but whose work I love and who also got a Guggenheim this year. She's also the only other artist/writer I know of who had a Wurlitzer residency (what I'm on right now).

magazine girls

So, if it weren't for the Sistagraphy (http://www.sistagraphy.org/) mailing list I wouldn't have known about Deb Willis being named one of "the 100 Most Important People in Photography" by American Photo magazine in their May/June 2005 issue (go, Deb!!).

Apparently it has been 7 years since they did one of these roundups. It may as well have been 70. Although I know several people on this list and think they're all great, in 2005 is Deb really the only black person in photography worthy of the list? (In 1994 model agent Bethann Hardison was the sole black "Important person"; in 1998, there were none.) Moreover, if Deb's work as an historian and professor (primarily of black photographers) is so "Important," doesn't it contradict her inclusion that there are no other black people on the list? Yes, we all know these lists are highly subjective and exclude as many people as they include, and we're "post-black" and all that, right, but really, what does this say to the rest of us? Another 165 years and you'll make it! And as silly as such lists are don't think for a minute they aren't taken seriously or all of these people (and/or their institutions) wouldn't have submitted photographs for their inclusion.


How often do you get to go the the newsstand and get 2 magazines with friends in or on them? My dear friend Teruko is on the cover of the May 2005 issue of More magazine (go, Teruko!!!).

Looking through the magazine, I was very excited and happy for Teruko and wished they had included more of her on the inside (and/or her alone on the cover—she was the winner of their 2004 Model Search but they have yet to do a feature on her by herself!). But what really gave me pause was the feature "Show Her the Money:"

Is this magazine really touting the payouts of female corporate criminals as progress for female workers? I was absolutely stunned.

"perpetual digressions of a soul wanderer"

I know I'm supposed to respond to responses, but I forgot to include Tawana, also a blogger (http://nappyscraps.blogspot.com), in my morning shout-outs (I borrow that title from her blog). Thanks for your note! It is young women like you who inspire me.

But let's talk David LaChapelle (http://davidlachapelle.com/) (maybe I should be doing this on your blog?!) Seriously. I'm fascinated and repelled by his work. I think he's channeling Jean-Paul Goude circa Jungle Fever big time, which is not an aesthetic I ever hoped to see resurrected. It's complicated I know, but I'd be interested to know why you list him as an "eyedol."

blogs and popes

I had a deadline last Friday so I sat down and created this blog. (I have one today so I'm writing the post.) Within the week, An old friend sent me her new blog URL and Delphine Fawundu-Buford, a photographer whose work I love but whom I don't know also sent me hers (they're both linked off the main blog page; Delphine's got portfolios of her images linked from hers, so check it out). You know, I thought blogs were passé and I was late to the game but apparently not. This is exciting! In the 6 years that I've had my website fewer artists have created their own web pages than I thought would, though many have. But this is a great new twist. There is something really wonderful and direct and interactive about this format—maybe it's more inviting than a website. There's less formatting to be done—everything fits into a template. Clearly there's this whole world of photoblogs (http://photoblogs.org/) out there of which I was completely ignorant.

Timing is everything. The election this past week of a former Hitler youth movement member (atoned, my ass) as Pope, the same week that the gruesome Ann Coulter is hailed on the cover of Time magazine, and even one of my favorite trashy gossip pages (http://pagesixsixsix.com/modules/news/) reports that some Christian website refused a prayer for Britney Spears because they don't like her morals, have all come together to finally give me some small glimmer of hope for the future. Conservatives get more absurd, outlandish, and ridiculous each day. Could we take any more giant steps backward? For the first time since November I'm thinking if they don't kill us all first (a distinct possibility) they just might collapse from the weight of all their absurd evil. Last week in Santa Fe I followed a guy until he parked so I could compliment him on his bumpersticker, which read:

Got Religion?
Please keep it to yourself.

what's new?

9 April 2005

In 2002, when I found out I had gotten a fellowship at Stanford, it seemed my career tide would turn. I had rarely gotten anything I'd applied for before, and this seemed real—it was year-long, it paid, and I'd gotten it as an independent. I quit my job and moved, expecting never to look back. I had worked my whole career to that point in the arts, but mostly in administrative, non-career jobs while doing freelance assignments on the side, so I couldn't claim any particular title, no professional affiliation, never even a business card with my name on it—I think at that point even my College Art membership had lapsed; I couldn't afford it.

Stanford was great; it got me back to California, to an area where I decided to stay and make my way, waving my independent banner high and proud—no PhD here!!! I already had an expensive terminal degree that only qualified me for jobs I didn't want. The dot-coms had gone bust; I could even afford it. Though I'd never fully earned my income from freelancing, I seized the opportunity to try, rented an apartment from a high-strung nut in Oakland, and hung my shingle, so to speak. But it's been a struggle. Freelancing is hard; if you're not working you're constantly looking for work, so all those grand plans of doing independent work in-between gigs never materialized. I didn't even really have time to work on my site. Though I love the independence of freelancing, after a year and half I've come to the somber realization that it doesn't exactly pay the bills.

But I wasn't naïve, I thought. Riding high and hoping to keep some momentum going, I applied for other fellowships while at Stanford; the Guggenheim Foundation, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, The New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers, the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland. One by one they turned me down. Disappointed, I also started applying for regular old jobs, some for which I was over-qualified, some for which I seemed just right, an occasional longshot: SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center, SFF, IMOW, SFAI, CCA, CCP, Photo Alliance, SF Camerawork, African Arts, Heyday Books, Girlfriends magazine, LiP, Jon Sims Center, and countless ads on Craigslist. Oh, and a couple more stabs at grants—the Guggenheim again (because no one gets it the first time, right?), the William Johnson Foundation—and a writer's agent who was a personal referral who never even acknowledged my materials. Hope clearly springs eternal. Again, one by one, if they bothered to acknowledge my application at all—and occasionally I even made it to second interviews—they turned me down. Up through yesterday, in fact. Is this field trying to tell me something?

What I have learned is that what you do and what you accomplish is not nearly as important as having the "right" credentials, knowing the right people, and playing the game. I work constantly but I cannot make it. I started this site to be able to give voice to my experience as a black woman who makes photographs and who studies images of other black women; that is what I do. Over the years I've often been overly cautious of what I say here, afraid I might offend some prospective employer, alienate someone in this very small world of photography and art. Well, how dumb that was—no one will hire me, anyway! Bitter? Yeah, I am. Constant rejection is painful, no matter how competent you believe you are. I turn 40 this year—you know it's bad when you start to believe it's your gray hair that's preventing you from getting a job. But I think it's also important that people who visit this site, especially young people or people who have this false sense that I'm a success in this field, as they tell me, know what the real deal is. What I keep trying to impress upon my partner is, that after two years trying to find a job or two or ten or something to support my work, I'm only as successful as my ability to pay my rent.

Out of those applications I sent out while at Stanford, I did receive an un-stipended residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos; I arrived Monday. What a lovely place; what lovely people. Thank you. Over the next 3 months I have the rare privilege to sit and think and write and try to forge a new career path for myself, far from the non-ringing phone. Mercifully, I have a couple of ideas, and haven't lost interest in or passion for my work. One of the things I'll be doing is overhauling the website, which I've been promising for ages but which, in the constant hustle of freelancing, I never have time to do. While it's happening, you will see a few things missing (I had to get rid of the guestbook because it was getting spammed too much and there is no way to control that), I'm sure many bad links, but hopefully a bit of rejuvenation of something that means a lot to me and has hopefully been useful to many people.

So that's what's new.