When asked what this project was about people assumed that I was starting some singing career, or making beats. No one really knew what to expect. However, the aim was to use analog mediums as a tool to give people who typically have others trying to tell their stories for them a place to tell it on their own. To explore Blackness within the nuance of regions, highlighting cultural identity through our accents, slang, and colloquialisms. No interviews, just open conversations where the subjects were allowed to speak whatever way they naturally communicate without the pressure of feeling the need to code-switch or make sense of things.
I take the same approach with how I do photography. In a world where things are overproduced this was the perfect opportunity to show how the ordinary can actually be sublime. The implication of candid photography is that we must take an experience as it comes, much the same as the varying ways of being and speaking are displayed on the record. As the entire project sonically and visually came together the realization that most people had the same topics to address led me to the realization that despite different regions, cultures and ACCENTS, we might understand each other more than we think.
Over the years I have described ACCENTS in countless ways because it had to stay alive within me and through me to exist today. Much like the birth of a child, once it was out in the world I was simply relieved and ready to rest. That was until I considered all that I wanted to do with this baby and all that I wanted it to be, the places I wanted to take it, and how I wanted ACCENTS - unlike some of my other work - to have a long lifespan in order to reach as many people as I originally intended it to. I fought really hard to make it happen, pushed past being misunderstood, multiple transitions with working relationships that left me feeling like I would never finish, self doubt, pushback from gatekeepers in my community - the list goes on.
I found a solution to every issue because it was critical for me to create something that the people I’ve met through my journey heard and saw themselves in. But when you are up against the pace of social media paired with the pretentiousness of peers who pose as “for the community” it can be a very steep hill to climb. At a certain point I got tired of explaining the concept because it was past what people wanted to imagine, but at the same time I needed a lot of those same people to say yes. Thus, I did not stop until the answer was yes, and what I made was a result of that relentlessness. I can honestly say that no one really understood what I was doing until ACCENTS was fully erected and moving forward I will have to keep fighting to make it happen in other places I’d like it to exist - but I’m ok with that. It is because of this process that I am becoming so much more comfortable with my evolution as a visionary and understanding that sometimes that means it cannot matter what others can comprehend because people will always be late.
bells hooks passed away this week and somewhere between not knowing what to say and knowing that she stood for Black women writing regardless of mood, context, and circumstance I found some energy to get my thoughts out anyway.
Rest in Power bell hooks.
- Nameless