This event is a conversation between 2021 Aftermath Project grant winner Kris Graves and Aftermath Project founder, and VII photographer, Sara Terry.
Their talk focuses on Kris’ grant-winning project, Privileged Mediocrity and the Deceived Within. Kris shows images he made during his grant year, as he explores systematic unfairness in America – and talks with Sara about his critique of the ways racism, capitalism and power have shaped the U.S.
They both share ideas about what goes into writing an American Aftermath grant proposal, and the kinds of projects that might be a good fit for the grant. Sara talks about the judging process and what judges look for.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:40
Sara Terry: Thanks again PhotoWings’ Susie Katz for making this possible. And I’m going to tell you a little bit about Kris. I’m also gonna encourage you to go to his website, krisgraves.com. His bio is about six pages long. So I’m going to give you some highlights. It’s pretty awesome. Kris is an artist and a publisher. He’s based in New York and California. He’s, as he’s pointed out, joining us today from Dayton, Ohio, where he has an exhibition opening tonight. Kris has basically been collected everywhere and exhibited everywhere. He’s at the Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Institute, I’m reading here a bit because I don’t want to get things wrong, the National Portrait Gallery. He is on the board of Blue Sky Gallery, a great photo nonprofit in Oregon. And I love this line from his bio, “Kris creates artwork that deals with societal problems, and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues.”
00:01:46
When Kris applied for the very first year of the Aftermath Project’s focus on the American aftermaths of 1492 and 1619. The judges were so excited to see the proposal because like I understand this is that we all understand this is a very hard any aftermath story, any post-conflict story isn’t obvious, like there aren’t guns, you know, you’re not covering conflict. You’re covering things that in many ways are metaphorical and are layers deep. So to add in, on top of that, that we wanted to look at the aftermaths of colonialism and enslavement is a whole other level of having to think deeply and conceptually. And Kris’s project as we looked at the work and read what he wrote, it was a stunning way of saying, of wanting to examine the racism that has been like institutionalized in public spaces, and in like, artworld spaces. And it’s just, I’m gonna let Kris go into it more here. But the thoughtfulness of understanding how what’s called redlining in the United States that led to blocking Black homeowners from being able to buy homes. It’s just this deep and really complex understanding of how rooted these things are, and how we’ve come to live with them and how we really shouldn’t be and how we have to see what’s around us.
00:03:10
So, Kris, I want to bring you into the space here just to tell us a little bit more about the project. Its name is Privileged Mediocrity and the Deceived Within. So just start and shows pictures and now this is a conversation that I’m going to be asking Kris questions as we go. And please certainly be writing in the q&a space too I’ll keep an eye out.
00:03:32
Kris Graves: Okay, can you see what’s on my screen? Is that visible?
00:03:37
Sara Terry: Yeah, I’m good.
00:03:38
Kris Graves: I’ve been working on this project name Privilege Mediocrity for almost, I’d probably say almost a decade, really. Just kind of compiling photographs of well portraiture made in the landscape, as well as a lot of landscapes and architectural landscapes about America’s issues being you know, like racism in the landscape, gentrification of neighborhoods, in and around cities in America, Red Line districts, which are pretty much where I think maybe now 70 to 80 years ago, people were, maybe longer. I mean, it’s been happening all over the place, but redlining means people were, specifically Black people were pushed out of the major cities across highways and didn’t have access to you know, food or good schools or anything. I mean, access to nothing. So that’s pretty much how a lot of American cities were built. I mean, most of the eastern cities in America had been redlined, have been redlined even New York City, Boston, Richmond, Virginia. If you name a city, it probably has some discrimination, some heavy discrimination, Chicago.
00:04:52
So I wanted to make photographs that showed these pieces of the landscape but also weren’t so obvious. They weren’t obviously about like, poor people or struggling or you know, I kind of get, I get upset when I still see pictures of like a really… anyway, you know what, I’m not going to talk about that because that’s a little bit too much. But um, so also working with like infrastructure problems in the landscape, and climate change issues, all that kind of stuff, all the stuff is happening and how do we see it in the landscape. And that’s, that’s what I’m trying to get through with my photography.
00:05:35
Sara Terry: And Kris, before we talk, I love the monument pictures we’re seeing here. These, of course, grew out of the protests last summer. And that first one in particular is just so powerful. But can you talk about how you see those issues like these very, in many ways, well, they’re long-standing issues, too. But how they, for you, they trace through that history of America? You know, like that’s deeply rooted and ingrained. And I’m curious how you just, in your own thoughts define that as your working?
00:06:10
Kris Graves: I mean, it’s hard and easy to photograph the racism in the landscape in America because it’s everywhere. And it just leads back to, you know, the beginnings of the country. I mean, first colonialism of like Native Americans being murdered in mass, by you know, Spanish, and sometimes French and British forces that just wanted land or to expand or to be free or whatever. You know, like, it begins with 120,000,000 Native Americans pretty much perishing within a 40-year time span, I believe is what it is. So begin there and you can see that in the landscape. I mean, you’ll definitely see some things that are ridiculous. And then it gets to slavery. And then it gets to, you know, I haven’t done much work with, with Chinese men who worked on the railroads, but I’m trying to figure out how to do a little bit of that also, and just show that these issues kind of exist. There’s other artists that do work like this, but I’m trying to piece them all together into like, one.
00:07:11
Sara Terry: You have a bigger I think canvas for it. One of our finalists, Phil Chung is doing his specific project is Chinese laborers on the transcontinental railway. So you’re pulling this, you know…
00:07:20
Kris Graves: His pictures are stunning
00:07:23
Sara Terry: Phil’s work has just been stunning. But you’re like painting this American canvas and landscape, which I find really interesting in your work. It’s a mosaic in a way that I haven’t seen from any other artists working in this space. So talk to us a little bit about some of these images.
00:07:38
Kris Graves: Well, I think that it’s just kind of, I mean, I may be unfocused. I don’t know, but like, it’s been so long that I’ve been working on this project that, you know…
00:07:46
Sara Terry: You’re not unfocused.
00:07:47
Kris Graves: Well, I think that it’s just kind of, I mean, I may be unfocused. I don’t know, but like, it’s been so long that I’ve been working on this project that, you know… I’m focused… I’m just always looking at every place I’m at, I’m looking for something that that relates to the past and shows the pain of the past or like, how weird. Like yesterday, I was in, I’m in Ohio right now for an exhibition tonight. And, and like we’re passing, I mean, Ohio has a ton of Native American mounds, pretty much pyramids, like pyramids. I mean, they’re covered in grass, but they’re like burial mounds for natives. And they’re still, you know, they’re kept in shape. Like they’re pristine in the landscape. They have their own parks, some of them do, some of them really don’t. But it’s kind of amazing to see that like, you can be in the middle of like, what you call one of the more boring cities in the country, not Dayton. But we’ve been through some really kind of stale places. And then like a mile outside of downtown, you’ll see like a mountain that’s like 50 feet tall that natives built like, you know, 1000 years ago or, you know, whenever so…
00:8:47
Sara Terry: You’re not unfocused. I don’t want you to feel that way. I hope I wasn’t putting you on the spot because I think what you’re, that’s what’s so I love and in the picture, like we’re looking at right now, like you in this way you work in this, the format and that you’re working in and just the sometimes the austerity of your work. You’re saying this place, this is my experience of your work. It’s like this place. Look here, you know, this is. Go ahead.
00:09:11
Kris Graves: There’s something happening here that we should be like. There’s something happening here that I think about and maybe other people should like this market in the middle. It says Old Slave Martin Museum and what it was was a slave market back in Charleston, South Carolina. One of the biggest slave markets in the country, actually, so you know, that’s, that’s what that building was. And it still stands there as a museum kind of strange. I mean, Charleston is a very, Charleston, South Carolina is a very strange place. There’s a ton of Confederate monuments there. There’s a lot of buildings devoted to slavery because I believe, I think 40% of all slaves that came to America came through Charleston. And that’s like hundreds of thousands of people through this one city. So all of the remnants of that past are visible.
00:9:58
Sara Terry: And for people who don’t know US geography so well, it’s a Charleston is on the seaboard. It’s a port city.
00:10:04
Kris Graves: On the East Coast. Right in the middle of the East Coast.
00:10:07
Sara Terry: Yeah.
00:10:10
Kris Graves: But yeah, I mean, I got lucky. I mean, really, I got very fortunate last year to have been working with National Geographic on two, or well, actually, a bunch of jobs but three main jobs. The first job was photographing Richmond, Virginia, and they’re like, the surrounding area of Richmond, Virginia. And we were photographing me and my assistant, for seven days, we went down and photographed the well, I didn’t know it was like the protests. I mean, we’re pretty much photographing peaceful protests on these Confederate monuments. And this is kind of what the closeup of those monuments look like, all through town. There’s about seven or eight Confederate monuments that were being like, painted up and kind of graffitied. And, yeah, we went down there to make photographs of the landscape and turned around and made a bunch of photographs of the people in the landscape, which was really important for this project.
00:11:03
So I did that job with them and then a month later, I wanted to go on a different type of trip where, well, I went around for 24 days. I went through eight southern states with another friend of mine. And we did 4,000 miles in a car, visited eight states, went from Virginia down to like Selma, Alabama, and then north through like, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia photographing Confederate monuments. I mean, I think I’ve photographed about 200 Confederate monuments at this point, there’s 1,000s left. But that was all we could fit into those 24 days. I mean, we were we photographed the Confederate monument every 25-30 minutes for 24 days straight. And that’s how many exist.
00:11:50
Sara Terry: Wow, I’m, you know, a question that occurs me it’s funny because I’m, I’ve been working on a project. I love this photo. But a project that’s about reclaiming narratives in painting. And it’s I’m flipping genres, of, of paintings of naked women made by men. And so I’m flipping things. And I’m, I’m taking the narrative of painting, as I restage it, and in particular, as I looked at the monument photographs that you’ve made, I feel the same idea of a narrative being rewritten both in the graffiti that’s on the monuments, I mean, the way you’re photographing them. I’m curious how you maybe I don’t know if you’ve articulated that yet, or not the narrative that you’re like appropriating back or taking away?
00:12:36
Kris Graves: Yeah, for those specific images, or like this image, I call this project Latency, more than the Privilege Mediocrity. And Latency to me means we’re catching up with time. I mean, I think that they now this building actually is not named this anymore. I mean, this was found at random on the road. We didn’t even know this was there. We just were driving from a Confederate monument to another one. And, and this was on the side of the road. And I was like, I believe that. We’re just finding random Confederate monuments. And it happened, like every, I mean, almost every day, we found something that was not a map or marked that was completely devoted to this, America’s past.
00:13:14
Sara Terry: Wow. But it’s this narrative that’s been written there in so many ways. And you’re capturing that, and, and you’re reframing it, I think it’s so interesting.
00:13:24
Kris Graves: I hope I’m reframing it, I mean, I’m just making the photographs of the locations right? These things are happening. They exist, and I photographed them in this kind of really German, very straight view camera away. And I’m glad that they resonate. I mean, you know, most of the time you make photographs, and they don’t so you know, I can make 1,000 photographs and show one because that’s kind of that’s how it is.
00:13:47
Sara Terry: That’s the story of being a photographer, but I do want to ask you a bit about more of that perspective, too. And it’s very clear to me in this image, the conscious framing in all this work that you do is like it’s so hard like you just said, do a landscape or do a built landscape and have it resonate or mean something. I’m just curious how you’re thinking through, even in this frame, like why you chose this spot and what you were moving moves to accomplish in it?
00:14:17
Kris Graves: I think most of the time… well, I I guess I don’t know…
00:14:24
Sara Terry: I’m sorry. I…
00:14:26
Kris Graves: I think most of the time… well, I I guess I don’t know… No, no it’s an interesting question. Sometimes you get caught in a trap where you’re photographing things from straight on. I mean, I do that a lot when photographing items from like, straight ahead because I’m used for living I photograph artwork, so it’s always like straight or it has very specific angles. And I probably use that in the landscape also, but I think that that was kind of something I learned when learning how to use if view camera and like kind of making straight lines and like kind of making things look architecturally proper. So I keep that going, I mean now use a digital camera, but I kind of keep that alive. So it’s pretty much like, I think it’s like this little historic artifact that my photographs like the really straight lines and like that. But then also, I think when I see something for the first time, like when we were driving on the road, I probably saw this at this angle, and then wanted to like, roll back and take a picture of it from that angle, because it’s like, the first time I saw it. Realistically, there’s a lot of stuff happening around this picture that you can’t see, like, you know. I didn’t want the corner where on the left side where the road meets the road. I was like, “I don’t want that because then it takes away from the building itself.” On the right side, there’s a big tree, so I didn’t want that I want it to be up here clean, you know, so that the building showed up, as like it bounced, you have a little light that shines right in the middle of that name where I want you to look. So it’s just kind of almost in the center. I try not to be too centered. So.
00:15:52
Sara Terry: It’s just so thoughtful. It’s masterful in that way. Because, you know, when I first came into photography, something, like I wasn’t as moved by Akshay, are some of the, you know, the work that was about place. And I’ve come to admire it so much. Because like you know, you didn’t want that tree, you knew you didn’t want the road to close, because you created this space with such gravity in it. And I also can’t even tell you how much I love the two doors. Right? Like, yeah, past and future, white and black. I mean, you know, it’s a Confederate Union. I mean, there’s so much in those two doors.
00:16:26
Kris Graves: Yeah, I put this picture online, and then someone from this town, emailed me mad, they’re like, really mad. Also like putting this, I’ve been able to have access to the NatGeo Instagram page, and I can put, if I put these up it’s like the best comments. There’s like, really like great comments. And there’s like, comments, like, just hateful things. And it’s like, really good to see that mix of commentary on images. If you go back to any of those NatGeo Instagrams, like, especially of like the George Floyd monument that is like, I think they had never had more comments than that picture got, which is pretty funny.
00:17:03
Sara Terry: Wow. Wow.
00:17:04
Kris Graves: Yeah. So I don’t even know what I was talking about. But I think that I try to keep things clean as possible photographs just as clean as possible. That may, that means a lot to me, like kind of make sure that you know what I’m talking about within the photograph, just because it could get complicated quick, like this picture here. I could show you the full monument, but then you couldn’t read how crazy this scene is, you know, I mean.
00:17:26
Sara Terry: This is one of your marks, like straight on, like, “Read this. Be here?”
00:17:30
Kris Graves: Yeah, yeah, totally. So you know, I mix that in, I have a whole series of work that, you know, there’s a lot of names that come from the same project. And this series is called The Southern Horror. And it’s based after, not a book by Ida B. Wells from the 1800s names, Southern Horrors. And it’s pretty much about the South and what you see in the south and how it affects people negatively over the course of like, hundreds of years. And this is just blatant. I mean, this is like out in the open everyone can go here. This is not a town that, this is not a white town. This is like a there’s like is this 70% Black, the town that this is in, in Georgia/South Carolina border. And you know, James Brown is from this town. And like there’s other like, really famous Black people from this town. But this exists down the block from where they all grew up, you know, like two blocks away, you can walk and see this. So this is what I want to kind of show in the work this complication.
00:18:31
Sara Terry: Yeah.
00:18:30
Kris Graves: Yeah, I don’t know if there was a question. I totally…
00:18:37
Sara Terry: Did it come? I’m sorry, y’all. Let me look under q&a. No question there. Let me look under the chat. I don’t think so. Do you see one Kris that I’m missing?
00:18:46
Kris Graves: No, no I don’t see one.
00:18:47
Sara Terry: Okay, we’re okay.
00:18:48
Kris Graves: Yeah. If you guys have any questions, please let me know.
00:18:51
Sara Terry: Yeah, or hit raise your hand y’all so we can see you. Yeah, yeah, Arthur. So Arthur Ashe, the great black tennis player here, but like, tell us more.
00:19:03
Kris Graves: Yeah, well, Arthur Ashe was born in… His statue is actually really, the statue on top that you don’t see is not really good. I mean, it’s not a good sculpture. Meaning it just looks like quite bad. He’s not in proportion. There’s a whole lot of stuff happening here. But at least they made an Arthur Ashe sculpture. And this is in Richmond, Virginia, also, where they have a whole street named Monument Mile, which I don’t know if they’ll rename that, but it’s pretty much six Confederate monuments about five like two blocks away from each other on a long street. And then Arthur Ashe is the last monument on that street, which one is weird? And then two I was just photographing the monument because I was down there and we had like a morning free to like not be photographing Confederacy. So I went down there to photograph and then randomly some kid or some dude drove into the middle of street parked in the middle of the street and did that and then drove away and then like, pretty crazy. I mean, I wasn’t the only person there. I mean, there was like, I think there was someone from the news there also, I mean, not even a newscaster, we’re just someone who was writing about the monuments. And there was like 10 or 15 people around, saw him do that. And then about, I would say, 10 minutes later, not even 10 minutes later, two women walked up to the monument with like a bucket and water and whatever, like scrapers, and pretty much scraped that white lives matter right off immediately. Right? I got pictures of all this, but like, so they’re scraping it off. Uh-huh?
00:20:33
Sara Terry: Yeah, no. So didn’t hold that. Sorry to interrupt that thought. But so you’re I’m so used to your work being in this like monumental stillness in so many ways. And here, you captured essentially, like a news moment. But it still looks like this monumental stillness. You know, almost if he’s part of that, you know, that structural landscape. And I love the way you’ve done that.
00:20:55
Kris Graves: Thank you, thank you very much. I think that that is like that straightening of lines and all that, like if I was a newscaster, I get closer, maybe zoom in try to focus on his hands doing the like, but I’m not interested in that I’m interested in like the broader picture. Like, there’s also complicated things on both sides here, it looks like you see the white lives matter, but you see Black Lives Matter painted over it, which is like, you know, there’s two sides of this vandalism happening, right? I mean, it’s not just, this is not a one-sided issue. There’s a lot of things wrong with this picture.
00:21:23
Sara Terry: The two doors, you know, it’s like those two doors in a way.
00:21:27
Kris Graves: Yeah pretty much. And so pretty much they come clean it off. And they were really good. I mean, they finished cleaning it off in like, I don’t know, like a minute. And they’re scrubbing hard, man, it was kind of amazing. And then he comes back about five minutes after that, like parks in the middle of the street and starts to try to wipe off the BLM from it and he can’t get that off. It’s like such a weird scene. People are photographing his license plate and just all this pretty funny. I mean, it probably nothing happened to this guy. And you know, that’s probably you know, that’s how it goes.
00:22:01
Sara Terry: Have you ever made a triptych of that space to like, here it was. Here’s this moment you got and then the aftermath. I’m just curious, as you were shooting, I love what you did. I don’t think you need it. But.
00:22:15
Kris Graves: I think it’s just one is enough. I try not to show want more than one picture from a scene ever. Just because I think that like, I’ve tried to make one good photograph of a location. And then that is what you get. Like, I try not to be a photojournalist about it, like eight pictures of the same scene is not what I’m interested in.
00:22:31
Sara Terry: But yeah, well, like one of them works. No, it’s again, it’s that specificity of what you’re saying that I just like love. It’s like this moment that look here, and that he becomes part of structural history is nuts.
00:22:43
Kris Graves: Yeah, I think it becomes far more diluted if I show like pictures of like, oh, them cleaning it off in that. And then it is just a documentary of a moment in time and not about what I’m trying to make the work about. This is a sculpture named Stone Mountain, outside of Atlanta, Georgia. And it’s pretty much the biggest Confederate or the largest Confederate monument in the world because they only exist in America. There’s a few outside of America, but this one is huge. It’s actually bigger than Mount Rushmore. And it was actually started by the man who made Mount Rushmore, and then he quit, and then it was finished by somebody else. That’s why it’s kind of unfinished. And they actually have a laser light show. This is three Confederate generals. At night, they have a laser light show that has these men riding off into the distance on this mountain, I need to go see that at some point because I think that would be amazing to see it.
00:23:37
Sara Terry: Oh that’s trippy.
00:23:39
Kris Graves: Really terrible. But again, Black Stone Mountain is like an 80% Black town. And this exists right in the center of town. So yeah, some complications everywhere. And you can see a big thing by you seeing these little trees with like trees on the bottom right there, you can see that those trees are probably 40-50 feet tall. I think that that that monument is a few 100 feet or maybe about 200 feet wide. It’s pretty big. It’s pretty big.
00:24:08
Sara Terry: Yeah. And the scarring of it into the actual landscape. You know, another way a narrative gets written and how does that live with us or get unwritten? Or, yeah.
00:24:19
Kris Graves: Yeah, there’s a lot of things happening here at Stone Mountain Park too because it’s a huge, one of the biggest campgrounds in all of Georgia. So there’s a ton of mixed people like just people from all over the country and world visiting there to camp with this in the background. And then there’s a, you can walk up the back which is probably like a half-mile up the mountain and you do that for exercise. A lot of people just go there for exercise from Atlanta to like, do that walk up and down. And they never see the side of the mountain. Some people I talked to didn’t even know that this was there. They just have been going up the backside of the mountain for a decade and didn’t know that this was in front. So there’s, complications.
00:24:56
Sara Terry: Yeah. Again, I’m just gonna drop in thought there. So what and as part of what we loved and judging the work and your grant when we decided to give you the grant. It was like all these ways that things are written in who we are. I remember one time thinking through white privilege and, you know, not feeling that specifically I had gotten benefits from grants necessarily or anything’s been, but just not being angry about it, but kind of going, “Whoa, what benefits have I gotten?” You know, and then the day it hit me was like, Sarah, it’s all white. It’s all white, the entire, like the structure of banking of whatever, you know, it’s white, you’ve gotten a pass, you know, on your whiteness, and I had read an article from a Black woman in the New York Times about being accepted it was a memoir piece being accepted into Harvard and going to her dentist, and he said, she goes, “Oh, yeah, I got into Harvard.” And he said, “Which Harvard?” And I just thought, well, nobody would ever say that to me as a white person. But so there is just all those things written on our soul in a way that you just keep bringing out with this very powerful stuff. And thank you for bringing this photo in. Because, you know, I asked you to, like I wanted this one to be in here. I just want to hear you talk about first people who might not know who Stonewall Jackson is. And then talk about why you did this.
00:26:17
Kris Graves: Stonewall Jackson. Stonewall Jackson is a Virginian Confederate General, who how he died is pretty incredible. But he pretty much died at this location in I forgot the name of the town outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which also has a ton of Confederate monuments and memorials. I went there. This is the last day of my first trip with NatGeo. We’re driving back to New York. And I wanted to see this one last location, which was this beautiful landscape with this super amazing, very white house on a very on a hill with a blue background. I mean, it was like a perfect day, it was probably 1,000 degrees because it’s Virginia in the summertime, but it was a perfect day. And then I saw the gravesite for where Stonewall Jackson died and where he was buried. So I just, I had I don’t usually make self-portraits. And I just felt the need to like sit down next, or like, you know, kneel next to this guy. I just been doing all this work and seeing his name everywhere all over the place. And I just wanted to make a self-portrait here. So I remembered like, this project was different. I mean, it’s the first time I’ve ever worked with Nat Geo in the first place and I was just happy to have done it, completed. it. Made some pictures that I thought were decent. And, and then. So this was like the last picture of that trip pretty much.
00:27:36
Sara Terry: What were you thinking, Kris? What was going through your head when you’re there at his grave of this, like a major Confederate general?
00:27:45
Kris Graves: Well, it was empty. I mean, we were there, there was no one else around. Me and my friend were the only people there. And I mean, and I was traveling. And it’s pretty funny that first year I was traveling with an Israeli, like another person that pretty much is not comfortable with being in the south. So it was like me and him out there making photographs. And we, I felt scared as hell. I mean, he was fine. He photographs, very complex, his name is Yoav Horesh. And he photographs landscape the way I do but more in black and white and International. His theme is international, like racism in the landscape pretty much. But um, so being with him was comforting, but it was also us in the middle of Virginia countryside where, you know, a lot of slavery happened. And I know that’s hundreds of years in the past 100 years in the past, but it did not feel good. And every time a car did show up, which didn’t happen often. I was definitely aware and you know, ready to get back in our car to drive away pretty much. That happened a lot on our trip. We definitely were stared at a lot. Got some very, you know, some weird comments thrown at us. Racist comments were thrown at us. We kept it as safe as possible. And you know, yeah, this is that’s the kind of the story of this photograph.
00:29:00
So Stonewall Jackson, actually I photographed so Stonewall Jackson was one there was one battle happening and he was fired upon by friendly fire, so it was a Confederate to Confederate like, like killing situation. He didn’t die then, but he got shot and wounded. And to try to heal him they cut off his arm because he got shot an arm or something like that it wouldn’t stop bleeding. So they had to cut off the arm and amputate him. And then five days later, he went back to this home and died. Right like he just couldn’t survive it. But they buried the arm about 100 miles west of here. So I have a picture of that too. It’s not in this. You can see it on my website, I believe and it’s pretty much like arm of Stonewall Jackson and like five days before this.
00:29:54
Sara Terry: Oh my god five, oh, that’s insane.
00:29:59
Kris Graves: That’s on government property that is protected by the government of America.
00:30:06
Sara Terry: The arm?
00:30:07
Kris Graves: The arm, yeah.
00:30:08
Sara Terry: So part of the reason you made a beautiful collection, which we’ll get through here and I had asked you, can you go back to the self-portrait for just a minute? When we saw this, this was in your pack your proposal for the aftermath project as well. And, you know, we will have photographs from your work for our archives. And we often ask for something that was submitted to framework. I was like, “Wow, this photo has to be in it.” Because I think what I love is, as we keep talking about these narratives, and what’s written physically in our countryside, to me, at this moment, you have rewritten the entire narrative of this space, you are claiming it as your narrative, and you are like saying, “I’m controlling the story now, Stonewall, you know, like, how’s that feel?” I’m reading my own responses into obviously, not your own intention.
00:30:54
Kris Graves: I haven’t thought of it that way. But I think that you know, if you see it that way, then I think maybe people do too so.
00:31:00
Sara Terry: It’s huge. And for me, it frames your whole project. It’s about the landscapes of America, and, then I have to go back now that which I hadn’t thought about before when I said I love the two doors. In the least school. It’s almost two doors, here again, you know, and then two windows, two chimneys. There’s it’s an interesting thing. I’m looking at your photos now just sort of going “Oh, wow, that kind of, you know, past present Black, white, white privilege, everybody else.” I mean, it’s all it’s, it’s just really interesting. And I really, really love this image.
00:31:31
Kris Graves: Oh, thank you. So that those pictures I just showed you were pictures I made last year. And I’ve started to make some more pictures, since then, that are kind of more broad in a sense, like, those are pretty much about racism in the landscape and the, like slavery, but then there was like, just a few more things happening in the land. Outside of that, you know, like, there’s last year, there was a lot of protests, a lot of businesses like, shuttering or during that and kind of still worrying about their glass, which was kind of interesting, like having all these businesses worry about. I mean, of course, you have to worry about like your glass and all your stuff in front of your stores. But it was a mixed bag for me. It’s like, “Where’s the support?” Really, it’s just about covering your property. But you know, that gets really complicated, I think.
00:32:19
Sara Terry: Well, that was part of that discussion, right of the amount of time that like that the police were protecting physical property, but not physical bodies. I mean, that was like the whole debate is at least here in Los Angeles.
00:32:32
Kris Graves: Yeah, totally. I agree. And it’s, there’s a little bit of that in there. And then just been on the road making photographs of the strange things that we come upon on the road. I mean, this is the middle of I think Tennessee, where it’s just hotels This is a hotel, and it’s just shaped as these teepees, which I find extremely problematic. In the middle of a problematic town as well. I mean, yeah, so there’s things like that going on. In West Virginia, we found this amazing wall, this mural wall was probably a half-mile long, and it was just, it was amazing. I mean, it was amazing to see so many murals of this situation. But also for a very problematic, this is not the most problematic piece of picture that was part of the mural, but it was it showed the most I mean, it showed like this disagreement, or this kind of fake this bastardized version of an agreement, right? I mean, it seems like everyone’s at peace, but then like down the road, like, not even 10 steps like 10 steps away from me, you’re seeing the battle. It’s just kind of like a weird moment.
00:33:41
Sara Terry: And I love the that you we see we have the grass and the building behind it and that you’ve placed us in a contemporary space. I have to say, so everybody I’ve had the great pleasure of as Kris has worked in his grant year on with his Aftermath Grant. He’s sent me images along the way that I’ve just been like, you’re blowing my mind, Kris, like, you know, your the ways he’s thinking through the stories that are in our landscapes. And now you’re just seeing a couple of them right here. So I’m gonna just be quiet.
00:34:07
Kris Graves: They become a little bit, you know, they’re a little complicated. I’m glad that you’ve actually like, enjoyed some of them because there’s so coded. I mean, there’s some pictures that are just so like, this is pretty coated. I mean, not really. I mean, there is some people wouldn’t call this racism at all, but I would call it 100% racism.
00:34:22
Sara Terry: Tell us why.
00:34:24
Kris Graves: Well, because this is not in this is in South Carolina. I mean, this is on the border of South Carolina in North Carolina, it’s a highway stop. It’s pretty much a place where there’s a bunch of games and play time for kids. And, you know, there’s also adult stores and not roller coasters, but like go-karts, and it’s just like an amusement park. But it’s themed to be south of the border of Mexico. Then it’s totally blatantly racist against like, you know.
00:34:22
Sara Terry: Completely the other side of the country for folks who aren’t, don’t have a US geography basis. And in the like, I’m not even on a border between states and other countries. I just I love knowing where it is to but it’s I think it’s great.
00:35:06
Kris Graves: Yeah, South Carolina has its problems. I’ll say that much. So does North Carolina. But South Carolina is pretty bad. And yeah, so you know, sombrero restaurant Mexico shop like all these, this the whole neighborhood like I would say like you’re seeing 10% of what this looks like and it’s all themed like this. It’s pretty, I would call I think it’s extremely embarrassing. I mean, like is it is just what it is and.
00:35:29
Sara Terry: The hat on the dinosaur. Yeah, it’s all it’s like this reduction of tropes and stereotypes into this, like, commercial space. Yeah, it’s way past.
00:35:38
Kris Graves: So yeah. So I see it. I mean, I also, you know, like, our malls are dying. All of these malls that we built have nothing in them anymore. Like this mall, the shopping centers in Syracuse, New York, it died a few years ago. And now the only thing in there is like a, there’s a movie theater in a basement and a driving school. And there’s like nothing else in this entire mall that had 100 stores or so before, like 10 years ago. And this is pretty much how the yeah.
00:36:08
Sara Terry: No, go. Tell us what this, so your reasoning on this picture in why sits in these narratives you’re drawing? What where’s it? Where does it fit in that? I’d love to hear you talk about it.
00:36:16
Kris Graves: I think that we’ve just been we were trained to want these things as Americans, I mean, like, all you see is advertising on television in the malls or malls, all you see is advertising. I mean, really, you can’t not look at the you can’t not see advertising when you leave your house. I mean, it’s just it’s everywhere. And that that is what the mall is, it’s a bunch of more advertising where you’re buying shit you don’t need. And you know, it’s kind of like this is a huge American problem. And now these malls will become the huge American problem, you know, they will be empty, until they figure out something to do with them, which they will never figure out. They will never give this property to someone who can actually use it or need it. This is a this is land that is like, “Hey you know, can you house the homeless in a mall? I mean, can you break down the mall and make apartment buildings for people in need?” I mean that none of that will happen this mall will just stay empty for 40 more years, that’s what will happen is that.
00:37:09
Sara Terry: So interesting, because in my explorations of American narratives have been around the wealth gap, and capital, you know, predatory capitalism and where those things come from, and that whole idea of how much is enough, and that it’s wrapped up in this American, you know, the myth of like, westward expansion, we need more, we need that we’re taking things from other people all along the way. But no, we need this and which leads into consumerism, like, no, we want to, like you just said, buy all this stuff, and how, you know how bankrupt it is, in so many ways and incapable of addressing like, yeah, why don’t we have the homeless living in shopping centers? I just it’s, uh, this. I haven’t seen this one. I don’t think what’s this picture? I love it.
00:37:52
Kris Graves: I went out to Hawaii because I thought, I mean, Hawaii has a ton of problems. And we’re always taught, I mean, as Americans, you think Hawaii and you’re like, “Oh, my God, beautiful. I have to go there.” It’s really one of the nicer places in America, you can be on a beach, it’s always sunny. It’s a vacation destination. But what that becomes is like an overpopulation of people that were never there before, you know, Hawaii was pretty much stolen by not even the government, but four or five businessmen from America that wanted it and stole it from the were able and allowed to steal it from a queen who owned it, or that not owned it, but she was the queen of her land. And you know, 100 years, I guess even like not, like 100 years later, it looks like this. It’s another shopping mall for rich or Americans that, you know, I am part of the problem because I’m in one of these buildings as well in a hotel. You know this is I’m not saying that I’m not part of this issue. But this is I’m just trying to show things that are happening here. And these are all from this is from Honolulu. Also.
00:38:53
Sara Terry: I love that you had that palm tree by the way in that one little thing in the corner that was like, oh, yeah, island paradise, you know, against all those right there in the bottom corners like “Yeah, I’m tagging Hawaii.”
00:39:10
Kris Graves: You are still in paradise. But you’re surrounded by the issues of what paradise brings. I mean, the homelessness situation, there is out of control for even the white people that live there. I mean, it’s like just, it’s a hard place to live. It’s very expensive. You know, there’s, there’s complications. I mean, like, I’m at this place, looking down at a beautiful, huge pool. But then there’s, of course, people sleeping outside on the street and a bus stop all night, every day, while people are enjoying their lives above it. So again, I’m part of the problem. But I am I’m trying to like reconcile some of that, I guess.
00:39:47
Sara Terry: I love that it has more blur than a lot of your work too. It’s just a slightly different feel. Obviously, you’re shooting at night and it’s a little different but I love the blur of the people going past by the pool and it makes me think go through a whole other range of questions and thoughts about it.
00:39:59
Kris Graves: Yeah, there’s I think there’s a lot to uncover here. I mean, if you start doing research, if it piques your interest to do research on these situations, you’ll figure out that like, there are a lot of problems that we never think about. I mean, things that I hadn’t thought about before, but now that I know some people that are part of Hawaiian independence movements, I’ve been intrigued by what they’re doing to kind of fight it. You know, police have always, I think, been an enormous problem. I mean, it started as you know, anyway, police have been a problem. So like, all this time.
00:40:30
Sara Terry: We can do another session on that.
00:40:31
Kris Graves: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about, like, what you’re seeing here, that thing on the wall is enormous. I mean, it’s probably 20 feet tall. Why is that necessary? This is a police precinct, by the way. It’s just a brick building with no windows on the side. You know, it’s like, it’s kind of an unbelievably ugly, ugly thing. And it exists in the downtown, middle of downtown Richmond, Virginia. And why do we need to see this here? I mean, art is art. But this is kind of ridiculous. So
00:40:57
Sara Terry: I love the private parking sign as well, that seems to be very intentional, you know, intentionally seen in a way, like private parking on a police building, you know, with that over you know, arching figure, it’s, it’s a…
00:41:13
Kris Graves: I made sure to park in that parking lot to make this photograph.
00:41:18
Sara Terry: Yes.
00:41:19
Kris Graves: And then there’s like wealth gap issues, too. I mean, like, Portland, Oregon is another place I went to this year for the, for this. And that is a problematic city, for sure. I mean, Portland as a kind of it started. I mean, I believe, and I don’t think I’m misquoting this, but it was pretty much Oregon was started by racists that wanted to get away from they wanted a full state for themselves to never have Black people in the state at all. Like, I mean, I think there’s, until four or five years ago, there was laws that prohibited Black people from even being in the state, right, like there’s crazy laws that existed in Portland, or not Portland, but all of Oregon. And now the downtown is filled with protest and closed structures, but they still have that beautiful Rolex watch dangling on top of the protests areas. You know, it’s that is the kind of complications that I want to show in the landscape. This one’s actually not in Portland. This one’s in San Francisco. I’m figuring this photograph out. I think it’s probably one of the weaker photographs in the series, but I’m trying to like, I don’t know why.
00:42:24
Sara Terry: I love that you wanted to show it. Yeah. What are you working on here?
00:42:27
Kris Graves: Well, I think that here is we’re talking about like the destruction of old and the beginning of this kind of new glass landscape that only a few people can afford. And that’s kind of what I’m trying to show here. It’s kind of coded. But um.
00:42:40
Sara Terry: The red of the stoplight is interesting. You know, like that. I mean, there’s like things that to read in there, sidewalk closed.
00:42:46
Kris Graves: Yeah, I’m less poetic about the photographs, I guess, than most people are I, I’m trying to make…
00:42:54
Sara Terry: I’m all into the poetry of it. You just go on and do your thing and be straight up. And I’ll just be sitting here going, “And I see this metaphor.”
00:43:00
Kris Graves: I dig it. I mean, when we need that, and I think that I’ve been so into, it’s been so hard to make these photographs, because it’s just walking on the streets until you find something, really. I mean, I don’t have an agenda when I’m making photographs, really. So I try to make the photograph is as clean as possible and try to get my, what I’m trying to say into it. But then the poetry I allow, you know, like, go for it with all the poetry if you can give us more the merrier. I would say.
00:43:29
Sara Terry: Just bring me in as you’re like Greek chorus when you’re giving talks or whatever.
00:43:33
Kris Graves: Hey, look if you need a writing job, I got you, we can figure that out for sure.
00:43:37
Sara Terry: I’m here for you. I’m here for you.
00:43:40
Kris Graves: Again in Portland just walking the streets of Portland. Random streets and just finding little pieces of protests on the streets, which is really, really cool to see.
00:43:51
Sara Terry: I absolutely love the reflection in the water of that puddle. I’m Breonna Taylor that part of the sign is that Black Lives Matter that’s coming through. That’s kind of wonderful.
00:44:00
Kris Graves: Yeah, it’s a cool scene. I mean, it was just a random street. And I was I mean, I was super bored. Super bored that day, and just walking around a lot of streets in Portland and not seeing anything. I mean, I got lucky and made a picture that I thought was actually decent, so happy about that. Sometimes you get lucky. I mean, the next day in Portland, I saw this and I was like well there’s a scene that you don’t often see ever I mean, I’ve never seen anything like this before we’re you know, this Range Rover was pretty much taken over by the homeless to become a shelter a structure in downtown Portland, Oregon, which is like houses, almost a million and a half people or maybe yeah, about a million people in and outside of Portland. So and this just is allowed to exist. I mean, this does not look new. This is not like the first day this was there. This has been there for weeks or months or maybe years. And you know, this is just okay. You know, this is now okay.
00:44:54
Sara Terry: Kris and your explorations, which is stunning, right and this juxtaposition of have ideas and types of structures. Did you ever go in, like into Palo Alto, or do photograph any of the RVs that where people come and live in RVs that work in high tech? Like during the work, they do it during the workweek, and then they drive them home to like how to homes they can afford that are three hours away? Have you seen that? That reminds me of it, yeah, it’s really interesting. In front of Stanford University, you’ll find it. It’s really interesting. I want to see how you see it. So please do that sometime.
00:45:33
Kris Graves: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I get out to California again, that’d be really great to see. I mean, then to speak about California, this is also California, this is definitely more of a coded landscape. Because, you know, people have been building their houses on this side of the mountain. But you can see some stairs down there in the middle of this photograph. Because those houses are now in the water. I mean, like realistic, like, four or five of these houses have already fallen into the sea over the past five, six years, there’s still some left on the back there. But you know, the erosion of the land is happening. And people that built on the side of the road on route one in California are losing their houses. So this is not this is actually this is a more complicated part of this project, because like this land is pretty all the all of our land has been stolen. So it all goes back to natives owning and holding it, and now we’ve just kind of destroyed it with structures and then destroyed those structures with just like, bad planning. And now this mess kind of all exists forever. I mean, no one’s ever gonna clean this. I mean, these are private properties, and they’ve gone on. They’ve used their property, the people that owned it, and now have moved on to another place where they can probably do the same thing. But.
00:46:42
Sara Terry: I see that is so much related to really directly related to the 1492/1619 Aftermaths and is particularly in some ways of the type of capitalism that grew out of slavery. That which has been so brilliantly explained in the 1619 project in New York Times work, but the idea that you can take and own and like it with slavery, a human being, you know, “Oh, yeah, well, we can just take an own mother nature we can and then do anything and wreck it and be not responsible for anything around it.” It’s a hubris, you know, that the winds up looking, in this case like this, it’s such a, I’m always looking for that line in your work.
00:47:24
Kris Graves: A beautiful scene otherwise ruined by just man as most are. And we end here, I mean, this last photograph in the series, I didn’t show many portraits, but I wanted to kind of show you that there’s going to be some portraiture in this project as well, that deals with people of, you know, people from all over that deal with these issues and have to work within this landscape that was given to them. So it is dedicated to the people you know, the book is not about the land, it’s about the people. And yeah, so we end there with the slides. But that’s…
00:47:56
Sara Terry: Tell us about this father and son maybe who are they?
00:47:59
Kris Graves: Yeah, father and son just in a lake teaching his son how to swim and like be in the water pretty much.
00:48:07
Sara Terry: It’s a really, I love that you included a portrait in this space, because it adds so much to the weight, the journey, the narrative we’ve taken in the physical landscape, and you bring us back to like, yeah, it’s about humans. It’s about…
00:48:22
Kris Graves: Yeah, and the books that I’m making some books in January and February. Well, I’m making two books in January, which are kind of all the pictures you saw plus about 100 more even more than that, actually, which will include more portraiture that goes back and forth between those landscapes and the portraits. So you’re seeing all of it at once kind of.
00:48:41
Sara Terry: So important. Well, Kris, I thank you for sharing those you all I know Kris a bit obvious, because we got to call him on Zoom and tell him you know, he won the grant. I still that’s one of my favorite pictures ever of that screenshot. But this has been a like, for me a treat to get to actually dive in with you and, and just think through this work and see how your mind works. I’m fascinated by it. And I want to see so let’s see if we’ve got questions. I see a new message. Dead aren’t somebody repeating “The dead arm of dead Stonewall is buried on government property. Oh, yeah.” Let me see if there’s if you all have any questions, so this is an opportunity for folks who might be interested in applying for the 1492/1619 American Aftermaths Grant this year. You know, Kris is an all of our finalists, actually. It’s on the website, aftermathproject.org the sorry, theaftermathproject.org. You can read Kris’s statement. You can see his work, the work that he applied with, we haven’t updated the gallery to his grant year which we will just see the four finalists’ work in there. And it’s thinking about the work as you can tell with Kris as an important part of being able to articulate in a way that the judges will understand. Kris, what kind of thinking went into your, you’ve already been working on the project, but was it a challenge to you? I remember being in touch with that during that time about that was we came upon the deadline, like, you know, if you were going to apply, how did you frame it? What did you go through to get to that?
00:50:14
Kris Graves: The application process itself, I think, well, I only have the work I have. Right. So I was just, I was realistically showing you the best the work that I thought fit best the grant. You know, I think that what was it 20 images or something like that? Yeah so I, it was, I mean, luckily, I had the work from Nat Geo that I thought spoke directly to the issues. So you know, I included some of that. And I included some of the Privileged Mediocrity work that I’ve been working on for the last 10 years and a short like statement about why I was making the work. And for me, it was pretty simple. It was like 20 images, I have those images. These are the stronger, the strongest images I could show you. And that’s kind of what I did, I mean, show you the strongest ones. For me, it’s pretty simple to apply. I mean, like the application processes, this is not a hard part. I think that that’s kind of you can, yeah, it’s like 20 images in a statement and like some, you know, some other like basic profile information. But that was the easy part, making the photographs and thinking about how to be on the road and think about what like the project was a little bit harder. And that’s, I’m just glad that you liked the stuff because it could have been just like, I didn’t know what you want. I don’t know what people really want. A lot of people would want more documentary style or like something more direct than I’ve been making. But you know, thanks for liking the stuff, I guess.
00:51:39
Sara Terry: Oh, you’re so lovely. So y’all, when we give a grant, it’s not. We don’t give it to a photographer to make the work that we want. Like, I’m a photographer, some of you may know that. I mean, my work started in post-conflict. It’s why I started The Aftermath Project, I wanted to support more people. It was really clear last year that The Aftermath Project, as an American nonprofit, had to start coming to terms with how good we could support storytelling around American aftermaths and my board when I said I wanted to do that focus for 2021. God love my board, they just said it “One year isn’t enough, Sara. We have to do this for five.” And in our commitment to five years of funding this subject, we knew we were we wanted to model for the funding world. This is what it looks like when you, you know, you pay sustained attention to a conversation that we have to have. Because there’s so much to unpack here. I mean, five years isn’t enough. There could be a whole aftermath project that’s only on American aftermath.
00:52:38
So what we saw on you, Kris was like, this ability to articulate, you know, through these amazing, you know, photographs, you were articulating narratives and history. And you wrote about it your statement isn’t, read Kris’s statement. It’s not just you didn’t just like go, “I want to make pictures of public spaces.” You know, you explained and connected. But the huge honor for me as a photographer, who like me, like how lucky am I but I had this idea about wanting to support people doing, I wanted to build a post-conflict conversation. And enough people have believed in it, that we’ve had the funding that, you know, to give money to people like you to do it. So there wasn’t anything we wanted, we were fascinated to see what you would do with a $25,000 grant as our first grant winner in this space. And I’m so proud and excited. I think I’ve told you and might be interesting for people here that we ultimately at the end of five years will collect this body of work and want to place it in an archive. So it stands because I don’t think this has been collected in quite this way or articulated and what it will look like after five years of consideration of these things. So you have just been like a banner first year for us. And the next one maybe you know a photojournalist or a documentary photographer it doesn’t do you don’t have to be like Kris either. So you know, I couldn’t as the person who would like envisioned it like I have you been like an ideal, you know, photographer.
00:54:13
Kris Graves: Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate the support. I mean, it’s I’ve been traveling a lot during I mean Covid. Now, this is like year two of Covid. But I’ve been traveling a lot making these photographs. So by the end of it I mean by the end of this year, I will have some more crazy stuff to show you I promise you that.
00:54:34
Sara Terry: Y’all can find Kris on Krisgraves.com. His gallery will be upgraded, updated on The Aftermath Project. Once we’ve…
00:54:42
Kris Graves: I think there’s two questions before you. We’re you’re here, but then somebody raised their hand I lost the hand raise. I don’t know where it went.
00:54:50
Sara Terry: Oh, here’s one I love “Will there be an aftermath publication of Kris’s work?” As part of the commitment in this five-year focus, we had done an annual book many of you might remember for almost all of our first 10 years with that 10th anniversary. And we are planning to do a book every year of The American Aftermaths Grant winner and finalist back to how we were before. I’m pretty excited because we want to do it with Kris’s publishing company that will have our first book next year. There’ll be a book of a set of five volumes, and then probably a special Collector’s Edition, when we reach that. But this, this work has to exist in that way that people can reach it not just our website, it’s got to be the books. They’ll go to, you know, educators, collectors, curators, we want it out there. And there’ll be exhibitions as we get going as well. I’ve started I’ve had funders come in that are really excited to support this work. So that would be a yes, Molly Mako. I’m not sure if I said that right.
00:55:48
So that would be a yes, Molly Mako. I’m not sure if I said that right. And then you have a question. You see it, Kris from Clinton Osmass about protests. Should I read it to you, “I photograph a lot. I photograph a lot of protests. Over the summer, there was a movement, I guess you could call it about white folks not posting their images of these protests, and allowing Black voices to rise to the top of this discussion. Just a really interesting question. How do you feel about white photographers, writers, etc. telling this story in America? And how can we share our work and ensure that we’re advocating and not exploiting this narrative?” And I just love you Clinton for saying, “Hopefully that’s worded correctly.”
00:56:23
Kris Graves: Yeah, I get it. I get it. I mean, yeah. Don’t. Well, what is the there’s no don’ts. But there’s a way that white people, a lot of I shouldn’t even say all because there’s a ton of artists in the world that do the work, do good work in this field, white, Black, whatever. But there’s a ton of artists in the history of photography that have done the wrong thing and have been applauded and given awards for it. I mean, I could say that like, you know, to name names, I would say that like people in the realm of Steve McCurry or is that his name? Yeah. Steve McCurry, like people that have worked those National Geographic jobs and just kind of didn’t want to understand they’re exploiting the people that they were trying to not exploit. Don’t do that. I mean, like, leave that. Leave that type of work behind where you’re going into, I don’t even know what it would be like going into the, like a poor space and showing how poor people are. I mean, like, that is something that we’ve seen already, and it doesn’t work, that doesn’t work anymore.
00:57:31
So it’s like, how do you uplift people with your photography or your art in general? So yeah, if you focus on uplifting people and find a good way to do that, in your art form, I think that’s what you have to do. I mean, that’s the that’s the wave of the future, I would say, like, uplifting people and figuring out like, how to show what you’re thinking about in your mind. I mean, I can’t tell you what to do. Because like, you have an idea about what you’d like to do. And you know, what you can do. So it’s going to be like, how do you use your skills to make something better than you ever made before? I don’t know. I mean, that’s what I try to do at least, like, try to make something you know, every picture that I make, I hope was better than the last. And if it’s not, then it’s probably a problem. So.
00:58:16
Sara Terry: That’s a step along the way. That’s all.
00:58:19
Kris Graves: Yeah, one day, I’ll be a really good photographer is how I feel.
00:58:23
Sara Terry: When I grow up. I love your answer, Kris, it’s, and I love that we can even talk on this a bit because building conversations in this space is really important. And I appreciate Clinton, asking in that way, as a white photographer, it sounds like you know what, you know, “How do I approach it? What do I do?” When we get that question in the grant process for The Aftermath Project, we haven’t labeled it. We don’t put color on who wins the grant or you know, can be a finalist. I mean, I’m proud of our first mix, I think they’re two Black photographers and Asian photographer, a white photographer. It could be I’m sorry, I’m not remembering immediately the other but it was a, we aren’t asking the color of the photographer who’s doing the work, we are aware of building a more open playing field, we’re aware of the need to be funding people who traditionally have not, you know, had access to funding in the landscape.
00:59:23
But and sometimes white photographers what write to me about it, I sometimes say, you can think about collaborating, you know, you can think about you know what it looks like if you allow the people you want to work with let them help you shape the narrative or like give them a camera or there’s so many ways. A photographer who wanted to work with the Native American tribe in Massachusetts, he was going to go in he had his idea and he said something and I’m going to give them cameras so that they do this and I wrote back and I said well, “Why don’t you let them tell you what the narrative is that they want to do? You know so that it’s truly a collaborative project.” And in it, not everything has to be done that way. But I think speaking as a white photographer and how I’ve been trying to learn as well, there are ways just that to work differently right now that really matter that are going to as Kris says, uplift people. And I think also gives authority to people in many ways to be telling their own narrative, which is part of what I love so much in your work, Kris, your appropriation of a narrative. You know, that belongs to capitalism, and, you know, some white supremacy and stuff, you know, making a new narrative here. So, Clinton, I think it’s about you know, how you can help be part of new narratives and new ways of storytelling. And that’s what excites us and what we look for in the grant process. And I think that dis we get all the questions, Kris, I know you were looking to?
01:00:49
Kris Graves: Somebody raised your hand, but I didn’t see a question.
01:00:54
Sara Terry: If you raise your hand, I want to raise your hand again, we got you. And if you didn’t, it’s been a while. We’re just a little bit over an hour we went on. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Getting to spend some time with Kris Graves. And thanks to VII Insider for, again, partnering with The Aftermath Project to bring you this talk and to PhotoWings for making it available to so many of us all for free. And Kris, you know, all respect. Thank you.
01:01:23
Kris Graves: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
01:01:25
Sara Terry: Yeah, see y’all.
01:01:28
Kris Graves: Bye.
