MAX SESSIONS So I've been doing a lot of yoga during the pandemic, and that's how we're gonna start. We're gonna take three deep breaths and then we're gonna set our intention and we're gonna go. So let's do that. Let's take three... I'd love it if you take them with me, or I'm just gonna... I can breathe. I've been doing it without you all. But happy to do it together. So...

The number three is a special number. We're gonna be using it a lot today. Three breaths, three points, and obviously more than three of you. Thank you so much for choosing to spend this hour with me. This is Seeing the World Anew, Combating Erasure with Photography. Not all the slides have them, but a couple have these QR codes. If you should choose to hire me again in the future or follow me on the internet, that's the best way to do it. Also, there's a "u" in my name. My mom is watching this. So I wanna thank her for that. She had the foresight in 1991 to think, "How is my son gonna appear on the internet?" "Aundre." In this talk, I graciously accept the commitment that you've given me of your time, and I want to trade you three points. Number one. How to listen to your quiet creative voice and let it guide you. Number two. How to move from being inspired to actually create something. And number three. How to be accountable to your subjects. I'm saying one more time because these are important things. Listen to our quiet creative voice and let it guide us. Move from being inspired to actually creating. And being accountable to our subjects. THIS ONLY WORKS IF WE FEEL LIKE FAMILY, YOU SEE? So this slide is gonna pop up three times. This time, number two.

Today in this room that's semi-small, semi-big, I want us to feel like a family. And in my family, we are Jamaican, we are very loud, everyone speaks exactly what they're thinking. And so at any point, if you have a question, this is, you walk up to the mic and ask it. And my expectation is that I've come up with these points and I'd like you to come with honesty and even intensity. You came here to MAX maybe to blow off some steam, to meet some other people, but more likely than not to make your craft better. And to do that, in this talk, we're gonna be vulnerable. And going forward, I hope you are too. Does that sound good? The church kid in me needs more energy. Great. Okay. So let's set some intentions. If you have a paper, like it's 1995, please write on it. But more likely, I need you to get your phones out. And we're gonna be using our phones a lot today. Write down why you came to this session specifically. SETTING INTENTIONS. WRITE IT DOWN. And if you're watching digitally, please write it down also. Thank you to all of you around the world who are watching this. I appreciate you, and I hope you feel like you're right here with us.

Was writing the intention down difficult for anyone? Why you came? If the answer is yes, you can raise your hand, or say yes or no. Everyone felt great about it? Okay, one person. You can leave. It's great. No. Maybe let's think about it in a different way. What are your intentions with your work? Besides not dying, making money, what are the main things that you feel like you're trying to say with your work? That's another way to think about it.

If it's still difficult... I wrote down three of my intentions. Like I said, three is our magic number. My three main intentions I work are to explore intimacy between my subject and me. I think it's really cool that I can take a portrait of any of you in this room. We have this moment that really can't be replicated, and then the internet lets me just beam it across the world and it can mean something different to different people. It's kind of incredible, right? Number two, I really love getting to visit new places with my camera, not as a crutch, but as a reason to just sit and pay attention. And lastly, it's important to me to create beautiful and thoughtful work focusing on Black and Brown people.

Hey, man.

ART BOILS DOWN TO FINDING A WAY TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WORLD. You came to this talk not just to make art, but to make better art. And to do that, we are gonna start by turning inward and thinking about how we feel about ourselves. The talk is called Seeing the World Anew, and that starts with us perceiving ourselves, and then we can project that out to other people. "Art boils down to finding a way to communicate with the world." Your medium, whether you're an object photographer or product designer, a portrait photographer, or a filmmaker, they're all different ways to speak what we're feeling, what our truths are, and what the world around us says. Or that's how I feel about it. Hopefully, you all feel this, or you all feel the same way. And so I want to encourage you that you're going be hearing a lot of tactics this whole week, tips in different things. But this talk is really about how you feel and being able to hear it.

GOOD ART REQUIRES VULNERABILITY. +INTENTION. So good art requires vulnerability...

and intention, but we already set that. So we're already ahead of the game, right? And I think when we hear vulnerability, we think about this really intense honesty where we're like, get on the internet and film ourselves crying, which is fine if you do that, no worries. But I don't think it's just that. I think that vulnerability is intention and honesty mixed together. Because just spraying a fire hose in any direction doesn't put a fire out.

This talk should serve as a reset to help you remember why you're creating in the first place.

I think the thing that's super exciting about Adobe MAX is this whole morning we saw people who have been working on things all year that we don't know anything about that now give us the ability to go the extra mile or do the extra thing. But the main technology that's always existed in art is the artist.

Does that make sense? Okay. So this is the third time this is up. Does anyone know what this is from? I thought maybe Elise might, really. It's okay. I'm not mad at you or anything. No. This is from Jerrod Carmichael's Rothaniel.

Jerrod Carmichael is a comic that I find hilarious. And in this special...

he puts on a red suit like Thriller red, head to toe, and there's no skit or anything, like, a particularly hilarious start. He just walks in outside of, like, a snow flurry New York City, sits down on a stage...

and says all the things he's struggling with.

And what's cool about it is usually standup is like this. You're on stage, you kind of gabbing and joking and moving around. But he sits still. He's down at the level with the people that he's talking to, and he lets them talk to him the entire time and ask him questions. He talks about coming out. He talks about the secrets that he's held in his family. And he tells everyone what his real name is. It's Rothaniel, which is an interesting name. But the special means a lot to me because it was an example of someone who wasn't afraid to not know.

I think that that was probably the center of how I view my work is understanding. There is a lot of things I don't understand and don't know. And me coming up here and pretending to be an expert, I think, does you a disservice. Because I'm not only lying to you, but you leave out of here and think for me to be better, I need to be sure of this. When our art and our medium is our opportunity to learn more. I'm sure, as I'm saying this, all of you are thinking about images you've made or pieces of art that you've made that have made you feel like you are even seeing yourself. That's what I'm trying to work on today. The best way I can describe it is this isn't like... This presentation is not a 2016 Instagram Aundre. Remember that time when it was just, like, all highlights? It was beautiful. Like, everybody's on boats. It was a wild time. But this is closer to 2009 Tumblr. Remember that? It's a dark place. -No, but... -The way we all were. It was a dark place. But it was an honest place and it was a weird mix of things. We liked things that inspired us and things we made. That is what we're going for today. So "it only works if we feel like family." This is the second or third thing he says in that talk. And I watched it a lot to kind of ground me. And we're talking about Tumblr, this is probably the most Tumblr quote I can imagine.

"If you cannot see yourself, you can't properly see others." The motif of a camera is so easy to latch onto or... Excuse me, the motif of seeing is so easy to latch on to in photography because we use our eyes, right, and this is not like an optometry session, I'm not taking your eyeballs out and giving you new ones. All I'm asking you to do today is to look outside of your viewfinder and understand that your main skill, your main technology is yourself.

So... let's get down to brass tacks. The way that a lot of you probably know me in terms of the internet or in Adobe circles, is this project I did in 2017-2018 called How to Shoot and Edit Darker Skin Tones. And then I did a refresh when I was a Lightroom ambassador in 2021 called Equity Through Editing. And both pieces were centered around the idea that we need to be able to take better pictures of people we don't know. And often, Black and Brown folks, I'm sure we've all seen the bad photos that certain celebrity photographers, I'm not going to name because I don't want to get sued, may or may not have taken of Supreme Court justices and athletes and etc. And to me, it was an opportunity to talk, like... I really kind of made this on a whim. I had read this article about how the light designers for Issa Rae's Insecure light the club scenes, so that you can still see people's skin and faces and it's properly exposed, which is hard to do. And this piece was weird for me because I didn't use Twitter at this point. I'm gonna call it Twitter. It's not X, it is Twitter. I feel strongly about this. At this point, for me, this thing was...

I think I posted it randomly, close my Twitter machine, open it up the next day and had 5,000 retweets and was like, "What's going on?" And it struck a chord I wasn't imagining. And when you think about it, you might think to yourself, "Obviously you made this. You're a Black person, it's important to you that people see and perceive Black people." Sure. But there's more to that. And so as I'm talking about vulnerability, I'm gonna be vulnerable with you and explain what the reason that I made this thing is. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to show you this little video promo I ended up making for it. And then we're gonna talk about how it was made. As a quick side note to my lovely tech team, remember, this gets super loud for some reason at a point. Great.

White America must see that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. That is one thing that other immigrant groups haven't had to face. The other thing is that the color became a stigma. American society made the Negroes' color a stigma. It's a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And many Negroes, by the thousands and millions, have been left bootless as a result of all of these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading.

So in the project, I took a bunch of portraits of other artists that I knew around New York City that were Black and Brown. I asked them what it meant to be seen, what visibility was like.

And this quote from Ray really stood out to me. "I think the part of the Black experience is simultaneously this hyper visibility and this invisibility." So as I was trying to say before, it seems obvious that I want to do this, right? I'm a portrait photographer. I think it's important that people feel comfortable, seem comfortable, you can see who they are. But honestly, the real reason I did this came out of a deep embarrassment.

I'm 32 now. It is 2023, right? Great. Forgot. Sorry. So let's go back in time to 2012. I lived in Chicago.

I love Chicago. Those four months was beautiful. I really do. It was a really nice time. But where I lived, I lived in this room. We had a bed on the floor and I was an intern, I didn't have any money. And my dresser, these for months, were these milk cartons.

So it's actually really easy to pick my clothes, I could always see them. Anyway, I was coming home on the train.

I used to take the Red Line then, and I got off on Sox 35th. I'd walk by the White Sox stadium. And I was like three or four blocks from my house and I started crying, man. Like, I have only cried in public, like, three times in my life. It's not like I'm proud of it, but it is what it is. And this time...

it's funny, I've been workshopping this a lot, and as I got to this part, I knew as I was going to tell it here, it was going to come out differently than I was practicing. I think the first time I said this out loud. But a couple of months before that, me and my best friend kissed for the first time. It's huge. I was elated. You remember that time in college when you're spending time with people but no one can communicate? Remember that? Geez, it's terrible. I don't miss it at all. But we were watching an NBA playoff game and we kissed and I was like, "This is it. Getting married tonight." No.

It only gets worse, I'm gonna warn you guys. So what happened was I remember, like, said good night, went back to my room and within an hour she'd come over and was just sobbing. She's crying. And she was like, "I felt like this for a long time, but I couldn't tell you because... I knew my dad would not be thrilled about it." And at that time, I was very joyful, optimistic child versus the haggard man you see today. And when I say her dad wouldn't be happy about it, we all know what I mean. They don't like Black people. But at first, it seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal. It seemed like someone's preference they were willing to work against. But from then, let's say that's February till it's July now, my life was pretty bad. I was constantly getting frustrated, constantly dealing with a partner that was really... You could see it was weighing on her. And this particular day... around lunch, she was gonna have lunch with her aunt, she was super excited. She hasn't seen her aunt in a while, her aunt was in town and at 2:30 she texted me and was like, "Lunch sucked." And I was like, "What happened?" And she was like, "My aunt had lunch with me today because my parents asked her to talk about when she had dated a Black person in, like, 1975." I don't know when, these people are old, I hate them. So she said that her aunt said, "It was a waste of time because it would never work and you're only hurting this person more." And that actually wasn't the reason I was crying, ladies and gentlemen. It was because I was on the train on the way back and I kind of forgotten it, you know when you get kind of lost in work. I looked at my phone and I was looking at this thing and I asked myself, honestly, if I could change what I look like, would I? And I took way too long to answer that. And by the time I had gotten off the train and it was about nine blocks home, I was about five blocks there and it started to well up in me. And when I started to cry, it just really came out.

And it was tough because...

I've actually never said this out loud, no one has heard me ever tell this story before right now. And the reason I wanted to bring it up today is because this talk's main word is erasure. Right? And in that moment, it wasn't that other people had said or done anything, it was me internalizing something and hurting myself to the point where I was willing to be invisible to make someone else comfortable.

"Erasure is to make someone invisible, which is in direct contrast, which what photography is, which is to bring light to something." Photography literally means painting with light.

But I want to make sure I'm clear. We're not even that far into the talk. This talk is not about how someone hurt me. This talk is about... At this moment, you guys are feeling maybe mad, confused, some of you're like, "I was not ready for this at 5 o'clock." I'm sure someone had a drink in here and are like, "Well, all right." So after this, we're going to start talking about...

you, me and you. So if I came and said I want you to feel like my family, I can look at you and say now, this is important to me. No photo I can take is more powerful than all the photos we take together. Does that make sense? Why are those photos important? I'mma let you all read this actually. I'm not gonna read it to you. This is from the Darker Skin Tone project. "WHEN THERE ISN'T REPRESENTATION, IT'S REALLY HARD TO IMAGINE OURSELVES IN DIFFERENT PLACES BEFORE WE'VE GOTTEN TO THEM. TAKE TELEVISION, PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM AS EXAMPLES. THERE ARE A LOT OF TIMES WHERE BLACK PEOPLE, WOMEN OR LGBTQIA+ PEOPLE AREN'T REPRESENTED IN THOSE FORUMS. SO THEN BECAUSE WE'RE NOT REPRESENTED, WE DON'T THINK THAT WE ACTUALLY BELONG THERE." SARA ELISE. This is where I found my quiet creative voice.

And this is why this talk is important. This isn't about me...

because the experience of being erased isn't a singular one. And there are more dangerous ones that lead to death, poverty, a lot of things all over the world.

But I'm sharing it so you can share yours. So in this very moment, as hopefully, you're coming down from that moment where your heart's pumping and you're hearing something you don't want to hear, what is your quiet voice telling you right now? Because at that point, mine was screaming at me. I think before I was just kind of photographing whatever. I was a journalism major, we were talking about this. So a lot of my work was reactive. I wasn't making things with much thought. But I can say that this was a big point for me where I started to ask myself if I am uncomfortable with who I am, then I'm uncomfortable with what I have to say and then the thing I'm trying to do doesn't make any sense. So just take a second, and take another breath for yourself and ask yourself, "What's your quiet voice telling you right now?" Is it a moment that you felt erased? Is it something that you...

know that you've been meaning to say or do that you've been holding yourself from? Just going to be quiet for 30 seconds and then we'll keep it moving. WHAT US YOUR QUIET VOICE TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW? WRITE IT DOWN. Oh, you guys can sit in chairs if you want to. You don't have to stay back there. It's no worries.

So if we define erasure, we need to define what seeing the world anew means. And I think Morgan, also from this project, summed it up perfectly. It's almost like I... I couldn't have planned this. This worked out perfectly because these are quotes from six years ago. "Being seen means being acknowledged entirely." I'm gonna say that again. "Being seen means being acknowledged entirely. It means having my humanity acknowledged, being accepted for my best parts and my messy human parts." I asked you to write down what you were feeling. So now we have to ask the question, or what your quiet voice was telling you, now that we have basically just had a bomb of emotion, what do we do with that? I think a lot... This is something that happened a lot to me as a young creative, I'm sure it has happened to people all throughout. There's almost like this emotional constipation that happens when we're making art. You know what I mean? You get to this point where you know that you now have to do something and there's this guilt that you're not doing it yet. There's like, "I don't know what I'm going to do." There's like, "I don't know what we're going to do next." And then all of a sudden, the thing eats itself and you're in the worst mood ever, right? So now we're gonna learn how to take action. Shout out to this... I thought it was really distasteful for me to put these in here as I've just stressed all of you out, but whatever, if you want to hire me. I'm just kidding. All right. So...

once you accept what your quiet voice is trying to tell you though, that becomes your intention. We already talked about why you came and what your intentions for your work are. It might be helpful for you, not now because we have things to do. But to reflect on the things you wrote down and then put them in contrast to what you wrote last. So the first and second thing, how do those line up now as you're starting to understand what your quiet voice is saying? If the word "quiet voice" is confusing to you, I'm going to try to break it down for you right now. After this, that moment in my life, my senior year of college, I was 20 when that happened in Chicago, I turned 21, my birthday is vaguely around August, I don't like people to know my information, so I'll just say that.

I was a fiend. I was just like... My brain was buzzing with all these ideas. I was like, "Man, I want to do this project about where I could go photograph all the local companies and photograph the CEOs and the lowest-paid person and then photograph their pantries." And no one would ever let me do that because that's an insane project proposal. Why would anyone do that? Why would anyone want me to photograph their income inequality? Or, this is peak, and I recognize this is a family program, so I'm gonna say this as tastefully as I can, I was really interested in...

photographing the life outside of working for these women that worked at this gentlemen's club, it just popped up for me. I'm serious, that first month I got back from Chicago and I was in college, I was just like every project ever. So my 20-year-old self was like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to call this place and just ask them if I can come photograph them." And they hung up the phone. Because I don't know why anybody would think that was a good idea. But in there I started to feel that I had to do something, but I had no idea what that thing was. So I just kept stabbing at this idea that I needed to photograph something that I felt could scream that these people mattered and thus, I did. But the thing I was trying to make was just reflective of what I was feeling inside. So what I'm saying is once you accept what your quiet voice is telling you, it becomes your intention. It is the thing that grabs us on our path. This isn't like your gut or your Holy Spirit, anything like that. It is literally your intention with art and what will probably drive you, whether you are a weekend warrior, whether you have kids and you're making art every two months, or it's your full-time job or whatever. There are things that we do and if we don't listen to those things, we get to this point that we've all been to before where we spend most of our year making something for a client we don't like or we're uncomfortable with. And if we can't remember what the thing is driving us, we hit a wall and there's, like, that frustration again, that unevenness.

So this is the first time I did something that I thought answered that creative voice. The end of my senior year in college, I did a really simple project called My Neighbor's Project. The way the project worked is, as you can imagine after getting dumped by someone whose family is super racist, you become acutely aware of microaggressions, things that... You almost try to protect yourself.

And this project was my first response in that where I lived my senior year was a poor part of the college town I lived in, as I'm sure the ones of you that went to college or have been to college towns know the areas around the college are usually very well-resourced, and then further away, not so much. But I chose to live over there because I wanted to live around Black and Brown folks like I did when I grew up in South Florida, and also because it was cheaper and I had no money. But also shout out to, rent was $350. Remember that? Yeah. It's a good time, 2009. Maybe not for people who were actually working, but for me it was great. So what I did with this project was all I did was I walked around the ten-block radius of where I lived and just photographed people on the street. Kids, families, just anything that I saw. And this particular photo is my favorite photo because I was photographing a church fish fry and the police came down the street to arrest someone for something. And they were, once again I'm not trying to get sued, maybe acting a little more aggressively than I thought was necessary. And it was funny because this same woman, right after this photo, she yelled at them and said, "You guys can't do the same stuff you do because the cameraman's here." And I was like, "I don't want to get beat up." But I think in that moment that was a kind of a turning point. I started to think about what it meant to be seen what my camera could do, how my camera could make other people feel safe. For some of you, you might have seen this project I did years ago called Nation of Newcomers. This project was started with a little Facebook post. I just wrote like, "How did your family get to America?" And so this was like 2017 or '16, and 300 people commented on Facebook. Remember when people used to use Facebook? Yeah, that was it. And so it was this project where we just decided to take portraits of people as they talked about how their family came as prospectors, how they came on the Mayflower. There's this one woman that said that they won the lottery in Poland, which I didn't know was away. And it was a interesting project about the fact that we are a nation of newcomers and it was trying to destigmatize what it meant to be an immigrant. And that was another... Once again, you're starting to see through line my quiet creative voice is moving and starting to feel comfortable. What you're seeing is...

What you're seeing is small projects with simple concepts. That's my second nugget for you. Now we're moving past just hearing ourselves and starting to get strategic, right? Always try to boil down what it is you think your creative voice is trying to tell you. Because the means with which you're gonna get it is almost never what you think it is. Right? I would say it was almost never what you think it's going to be.

So this project, I remember we didn't have a lot of money so the studio gave us their space for free. We had one room where we were doing video interviews, taking photos and people were waiting. And so basically most of the day it was really interesting because we were sitting there and people were taking photos and while we were interviewing, everyone had to be silent. So it was a room of 15, 20 people that were just listening to people talk about these really intense moments in their life. And it was a nice reminder to me of what photography is. So let's get strategic. Let's get practical. Let's make a pipeline. Super fun word. If any of you have worked in a house before, I'm sure some of you do, you know what a funnel is, right? You guys know what the funnel is? Hopefully. People nodding in trauma. The funnel is this thing, the best way to think about is, anything you're wearing right now that you purchased, usually there's a sales funnel. So the funnel idea is at the very top, it catches as many people as possible, and then it brings them down to a single decision, which is to purchase the thing, right? Let's take that and apply it to our creative work, and let's make a pipeline. The beginning of our funnel is huge. It's observation and inspiration. So we're seeing a problem or finding inspiration. It's often not something that we recognize actively. But I would say that all human struggle is for love, survival or recognition, right? So that can be told in fashion, in editorial work, in film work.

As you write these many different things, you feel like your creative voice is saying, like, start with asking yourself like, "What is the thing I'm observing and what's the thing I'm inspired by?" Then strip your idea down to the bolts. Like I'm saying, make it as simple as possible. STRIP YOUR IDEA DOWN TO THE BOLTS. Maybe you live in a neighborhood that's rapidly gentrifying and there's a place that you love to eat in or look at or be a part of and that place is closing. Maybe that's a good opportunity for you to photograph that place as part of a larger tapestry of the thing you're saying. I don't think the quiet creative voice is a revelation for how you're going to heal all the things that you're feeling, but I think it's something that can guide us towards stories that need our attention and our light.

So this is the next thing. And we're gonna get into these next two over two separate sections. "What stories do you actually consistently have access to?" The word is "consistently." And lastly, who are potential stakeholders and collaborators? People that you can work with in front of the camera, behind the camera that you can ask questions to, that can give you access to other things.

These are your four pipeline questions We're gonna go back over our statements. We're going back over later. So let's start with access. "What stories can you access again and again?" UNITED SHADES Some of you know one of my favorite things I used to do before CNN canceled it was working on the set of United Shades with W. Kamau Bell, that other happy-looking gentleman, and Dwayne Kennedy, that very sad-looking gentleman. We were in Hawaii there, hilariously, having a fantastic time.

And I love working on that show, man. I don't know my dad, so I think it's really cool to hang out with some older Black men and just get wisdom from them.

Those shows are about an hour long. How many days do you think we would film for that show to make a one hour of television? -Three days? -A week. A week? 15 days? Two. So 14, 15 days. Anybody else? So we'd usually be somewhere between six and nine days. And it's not actually an hour, it's 42 minutes. For my math people, that means about six minutes a day was actually TV. So that meant we were waking our happy butts up at sunrise shooting all the way through sunset all day for six or seven to eight days for six minutes.

Does that mean that the stuff that we're doing in outside of the six minutes wasn't important? Obviously not, right? You couldn't just go up to somebody, especially with that show, and be like, "Tell me about this traumatic thing that happened to you. Great." And leave. Because that would be crappy and awful and extractive. Maybe not the right word. You know what I'm trying to say.

So much of the show was this. Come out and talk to people, us talking to people. There are wonderful producers and directors that worked on that show, Morgan Fallon, Helen Cho, Zubin, Michael Steed. And getting to work with them was a crash course in what it meant to have access. We'd have a new season, they'd pitch ideas, and then usually each director-producer pair would have two episodes, they'd have months to work on. So they would be calling people, researching people, flying places early to meet people. Just so when we got there with 4 cameras and 12 people, they could be themselves. And being able to go back again and again was a superpower. Because being able to do this... Let us take photos like this.

Does that make sense? To elaborate more, "There is no substitute for your subject's trust and your time." I don't care how good of a photographer you are. We live in a phase where people in this room could all do a better job than you could or I could. People around the world could do a better job than you could or I could. Really what matters, in my opinion, and hopefully to you, because you're now in here getting berated, I'm kidding, is getting the right thing. And that starts with understanding that we have to spend time with it. We spent 20 minutes just now seeing how we feel. Some of you are going to take more time tonight and really think about that tomorrow, hopefully, too. And now that you've gotten deep in with how you feel...

it kind of shifts into being able to know how you feel about something so you can shut up and make something beautiful. And that requires working with your collaborators. So this is a project I did when I was an Adobe Creative resident where I took portraits of teenagers. And I've always found teenagers to be fascinating because they're really, really smart at this time, their brains are more developed, they can do a lot of things, but they're trapped. They don't decide where they live. They largely don't really decide other things about their lives. They just kind of have to operate within this construct that other people have. And after spending a couple of days with them taking these portraits, after that, you get quotes like this from Carlton. "JUST BECAUSE I DRESS LIKE THIS DON'T MEAN I THINK LIKE THIS, YOU KNOW?" CARLTON C. This piece was about what it was like for the five of them to be, or six of them, to be the first people in their family to potentially go to college.

It was stories from here, so it was what I did throughout my entire Adobe Residency 2017-2018. And then toward the end, I started to do the stuff that I was really interested in. We're gonna see another one in a minute. But this one I really loved because I just think that they're so honest because they really don't have a lot else. It's like a currency almost.

So you know how much I love activities. I would love for you to take a minute and write down five places that you frequent that you consistently notice something in. Taking a minute to think about what access you have that maybe you haven't considered. So this could be your home, your church, your barber shop. This could be where you take your walk every day with your dog.

I'm Floridian and since I was a little kid until now, I've seen how the waterways have changed. I'm not a big nature photographer, but if that's something that I continue to notice, that could be something that I want to speak to. So write down the things you have access to, take a minute, think about... Doesn't have to be five, but we just picked a number. I thought we were getting bored with three, so we threw some new in.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking. 5 PLACES YOU FREQUENT & SOMETHING YOU CONSISTENTLY NOTICE IN EACH PLACE. WRITE IT DOWN. What's your name? -Angie. -Angie? Angie asked a good question. How do you be respectful of other people's stories? So we talked about what hurts us, what makes us vulnerable, and what inspires us. Now we turn the corner. Everything that you make, this is going to sound weird, so we've been spending a lot of time thinking about what our voice is telling us, but, weirdly, everything that you make isn't always about you. It might start out that way, but it will shock you. And even just looking at comments from projects I'm sure, you've done or things you might make or show to someone, there's this fascinating thing that, like, we find things that inspire us and it brings out things we weren't expecting.

So if we want to be respectful of our subjects, we need to do a couple of specific things. So, first, Angie, can you come up here for a second? Can you come up on stage with me? Is that okay? Yeah, you don't have to. You definitely don't have to. It's totally fine. I can bully someone else.

Yeah.

Yeah, shout out for Angie. I appreciate the claps. Okay. So often when we're taking photos, this is a commercial photographer editorial for everybody. Everybody does this thing that I think is insane. If I tell everybody to look to your right, what are you going to do right now? Your right, right? Which right is my? Or what I said, look to... look right, excuse me. I shouldn't have said you right. You wouldn't be sure, right? Photographers do this a lot where we mirror what we're doing and instruct people from this. Say, I need you to do this or do this or we touch people and it's very aggressive and unhelpful. My first tip, this is the only thing you take from this, stand shoulder to shoulder with somebody both emotionally and physically and show them what you need or explain it to them so that they can see it, not look at it in a mirror.

Does that make sense? So if I want you to take a step back, or I want you to turn your body slightly, it doesn't help you if I say "turn to your right," or "turn right" because that could very well be the incorrect or the correct thing. But instead, slowing down enough to say to your subject like, "I'm not going to grab you, but I want you to turn to your left," and then it's so much easier for someone to see it when you meet them in their perspective.

So as your first tip, always meet someone in their perspective and try to make sure you understand what you're asking to do ahead of time. Thank you, Angie. Shout out to Angie.

Number two, this is for everything in life, by the way. Over communicate and re-establish consent consistently. So let's go back to that idea of us photographing like a closing restaurant as reflective of gentrification. Yeah, they might say yes, they have two or three months left of being open. And some days they may not want you there. They may feel frustrated because they understand that the thing they built is going away. And you should be comfortable saying, "Hey, is it okay if I'm still doing this? Are you comfortable with me being in this space?" Consent is a fantastic word for a lot of things. And I think if we can make sure we bring it into photography, it can help us make sure we don't take on a project and then erase the very person we're trying to highlight. Does that make sense? Okay. Share your work early. This is something that I think makes a lot of us very anxious is showing folks what we're doing. But after you take a photo, if it looks particularly good or you've been working on a set, being able to share what you're working on with the person, that invites him to be a collaborator, not just a stiff person waiting for you to decide as a judge and jury what is made. And I'm sure it's happened before where you've taken a photo and a client has seen it and they're like, "I like that one," and you're like, "What are you talking about?" We're not everything. We are a conduit for what our voice is, and for other people. And lastly, pay attention to what's important to them. Second tip, get your phones out.

Remember when we were... Oh, maybe they're already out. I'm doing a terrible job. No, get your phones out. I think it's really interesting that, remember when we were kids... Okay, when the 30-year-old people were kids and the people older than me, you'd open your wallet and people would have, I don't know, like a magazine full of photos of people they cared about. Thankfully, we don't do that anymore. But your phone, from my opinion, if you want to know somebody, look at what their phone background is. It's just something they find beautiful, someone they care about, a place that they like to remind themself of. So if you're having a hard time connecting with somebody, start with their phone background and ask some questions about it. Was that helpful for your question? -Yeah. -Cool.

So I think a good example is this piece I did. This was the very end of the Adobe Creative Residency. I got to work with the Women's Prison Association. So the Residency of this project called Stories from Here that was all about these micro-stories of... I had this idea of if we gave everybody a magazine cover, like, you know, Rihanna stories, like, "I met Rihanna and she had, like, a genoise salad." You're like, "What? Okay." But I think people have interesting things to say. And it was wrapped around this idea of a sense of place. And so I got through the Women's Prison Association to interview these two women who had recently... transitioning from being incarcerated.

And I've been saying to you for a while now that now that we're listening to our creative voice, we're a conduit for the world around us.

This is a good example, in my opinion, of these photos aren't that good. I am not under the impression that they are. But they were very happy to take them with me.

When I was getting there that day, I lived in Clinton Hill at the time, and so I was taking the G train to the F. So I went back to, I think, Bergen and then took the F until Jamaica, Queens, the very last stop. And that day I was listening to False Prophets by J. Cole, and he has this line that says, "l be fiendin' to write songs that raise the hair on my arms." I think about that lyric all the time. But that whole time, remember, I was getting there, and this is another tip that goes along with it, I kept thinking to myself, "I'm going to hear something today that's going to upset me. And I need to do my best not to..." Or like, "Oh, my God," or do anything that makes that person feel like they're not human beings. Right? Because if my goal is to make them feel seen, then in some ways, now that I have access to this project and I have their trust, I need to let them guide and lead. So we got there, they showed me the apartment they shared together. On the left is Deborah, on the right is Keisha. And Deborah told me this story that I think about all the time, basically every time I'm in a bathroom. She said when she came back from being incarcerated, the only place she felt safe was sitting in the bathroom in her son's house, or her son's apartment, because it was the smallest room and there were no windows in it, and it reminded her of her cell. And so she would wake up at 3:00 or 4:00, whenever they'd normally wake up, and she would just sit in there for hours. She said she'd forget what time it was, and her son and their kids would be knocking, knocking and being like, "Hey, we have to go to school." It's like six o'clock in the morning at this point. And I remember as she was saying this, my first urge was to be, like, to center myself and be like, "I can't believe that you dealt with that." But in that minute, for just a second longer not speaking helped make something that I think they were comfortable with. And before these got published in Teen Vogue, I've sent the photos to them and they were cool with them.

One more project I want to mention is this cool project I got to do. I got to go to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2019. I'm not a camping guy, not my steeze, but The North Face reached out and asked if I wanted to go to The Refuge with a couple of other artists for a project they were doing.

Made a bunch of photos like this. All the way on the right, most of you are going to mention international supermodel Quannah Chasinghorse. She was not a supermodel at that point. She was just, like, a cool attractive person. And now she is just... Shout out to Quannah, she's amazing. Anyway, in this piece, we got to go to The Refuge and camp there for days and take these photos that were then got shown at Capitol Hill. You can see with the photo of Quannah, and then down here the photo of Maia Wikler, who's this incredible journalist. Maia actually directed a piece about Quannah that was in Sundance. Anyway, that whole day, actually two days, we went to the office of a couple of representatives, some senators and just showed work. And, of course, I was hyped, especially the first day. I'mma go in there, you know, let them know. No, I couldn't speak. Because when we went in there, we showed the work and Quannah and a couple of other Gwich'in tribe folks sat down and were like, "This is our home. And you need to help us protect it." And so what my work, although it was super fun when I was there, what it represented at that point was a conduit for them. So my quiet voice was, "I'm gonna go to this place and speak about this injustice." But then once we were in the moment, what I had to say wasn't important anymore.

So it's been a really interesting journey that we've been on, from how do we hear ourselves, how can we be vulnerable, how can we hear ourselves, what can we do with what we hear, how can we continue to work on what we hear. And now we're at this point where I'm almost telling you not to listen to yourself. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, once you are honest with yourself, it allows you to be a mirror for society, for the world around you. And this doesn't mean that every project you do is gonna be like this traumatic thing. But it is something that is your charge, is your responsibility as an artist to shine a light on the things in the world around you. What you have access to on your street, on your block, all these things give us strength and courage and a through line for all the work that we do in our lives. Whether we have kids or stop photographing for ten years, when we are at a point where we feel like this is the end of our rope and our life, we should be able to look back and feel like we've touched in with that quiet creative voice and we've made work that's reflective of the truth that we know.

This is something I wanted to point out. This one is a Trevor Noah quote that spoke to me so deeply. And it doesn't exactly go with the talk, but I'm on the stage, so you guys can't stop me. "The economy of visibility is often mistaken for the economy of attention." What I mean by that is often we're conflating the idea that someone is doing something for attention when in actuality they just want to be seen. There's beauty in being able to be seen. And I think in this period of our lives in the last, I think, 15 years, words like snowflake have come up or like, safe space, or whatever it is. And I think it's a ridicule of people that want to be in a space where they want to be seen. And being seen in attention, those two things can coincide or... Intersect is the right word, excuse me, to my geometry teacher.

But...

at worst-case scenario, we're shining a light on something that we know is true. And if someone gets some more attention, okay. But if we erase them, we're doing a great, great disservice.

This is a photo I wanted to put in here. I like it a lot.

"We are not meant to be artistic libertarians. Our work is not solely based on our genius, but is a reflection of the reality around us. Our access to that is what allows everyone around us, and ourselves, to be seen.

So with that, I think it's time we should let our work speak.

So let's go back through our four pipeline points. Observation and inspiration. I'm going to show you a piece in a second that I made with my phone a couple of years ago. And this piece was a gift to my mom.

It was 2015, I had just been in New York for about a year. And my grandfather died, I think, on the 4th of July. But we're Jamaican, so it wasn't a big deal. We were upset that he died, but we weren't like, "Oh, no, the 4th of July." So we did this, I remember my mom at that point, I think, had, like, $400 to my name, and I knew she had to pay for these funeral processions and she had to go back to Jamaica. So I just chose to not go. And so for a while, I've been thinking a lot about how my mom's the oldest of her siblings and how close she and my grandfather were, and I wanted to make a piece about it.

But when I started to strip it down, what I was really trying to talk about was the fact that death really...

I don't know how to deal with it.

So then when I started to think about what I had access to, I thought about what I had around me in New York City. I have the beach. I have people I work with and love. And so I tried to construct a story that was something that I could access without it being tremendously difficult, expensive or just a big hassle.

And then as I identified potential collaborators and stakeholders, I talked to friends of mine that felt similarly. Felt fear. Felt like they were trying to translate how they felt through beauty.

So this is what I made.

FLOAT A FILM SHOT ON IPHONE I understand.

-Ice cream! -Ice cream.

Ice cream.

Hey, sweetie.

You guys thought I was gonna make you cry. It's gonna happen at the beginning and the end. We out here. Anyone can be an artist. Even just by coming today you've made a decision. Coming to MAX, watching it online, you made a decision to take a minute to listen to other people in hopes that it will bring you something. And once again I'm gonna tell you that you are the greatest technology, you are the artist.

Whether you feel like you haven't made anything before or you're trying to make something now, like, I made this on my phone, man, and four people, driving all around Queens.

That's the only thing I want you to hear is you listen to yourself, so that when you make things, it can speak to others.

When I posted that, I think I do this a lot, I post something and then just run away, when I turn my phone on, I think I posted it that morning, and then I think I had to film something that day. I think I was actually at your house, Sirha. And when I turned my phone on, I was like, "Nah." I started to back off because I got so many comments about people mourning a parent or... I guess things that I had never considered. And I think in that point, I was just trying to make something that I thought would tell my mom, like, "I see you," you know? And that's the best example I can give you. Your work is both sincerely and authentically yours and also 100% a reflection of the world around you. And seeing the world anew means that your quiet creative voice leads you, and then where you get to, you just be quiet and listen.

So you have to listen to everything that's around you.

I want to thank you guys for being an incredible listening family.

I don't know if this is what you were expecting, but I hope that you left this with an understanding of why I think you're tremendously capable and interesting and powerful. You have decided to try to make something that you make better.

And I hope this was as much healing for me as it was for you and that it's rooted in how you feel and who you are. Could you hand me that for a second, that poster? For a couple of people who got here super early, I made these posters a couple of weeks ago when I was in Detroit with this illustrator Amos Kennedy. And when he found out I was giving a talk, he's a 75-year-old man, he's ridiculous, and he was like, I'm not going to do an impression, I almost did, he was like, "Why don't we make something so we can give to a few people?" And it says, "Always Choose Happy." And I think until this point in my life, I thought that happy meant that you were smiling, or you were just kind of ignoring what was around you. But I think it's a mindset in that you're choosing your joy, and I think that happens when you listen to yourself. So I'm gonna say it again. Listen to yourself. Listen to yourself. Listen to yourself and see where it guides you.

Thanks. That's it.

And we finished early so I can put this quote up, which I like. But hold on. If you want to, you can QR code like Instagram threads, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. I also have a Discord, if you like Discord. And I'm gonna be sending emails eventually. Please find those things. But really the only thing I want to hear from you all is in three months that you made something you were excited about and you just want to tell me about it. I think that's so cool. We have extra time, so I added this quote. It's super rad. It's from this book The Unbearable Lightness of Being. "Without realizing it, the individual composes his or her life, or their life, according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress." Your voice is always there. Just got to listen to it. Cool. That's it.

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Seeing the World Anew: Combating Erasure with Photography - S6007

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ABOUT THE SESSION

To be seen is to be cared for. So what happens when people are overlooked, devalued, or downright invisible? Join this talk by photographer Aundre Larrow as he explores the intimate nature of photography and our responsibility as artists to document everything and everyone around us. The thesis is simple: Access yields our most honest art and allows subjects to live forever through our eyes.

You’ll learn:

  • How to seek out and capture stories that exist around you
  • How to tell stories collaboratively with your subjects
  • When to direct your subjects and when to let them direct you

Technical Level: General Audience

Type: Luminary Session

Category: Inspiration

Track: Photography

Audience Types: Photographer

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