This is behind the scenes of one of my favorite self portraits that happened by coincidence one day. I had drove into a city nearby and unbeknownst to me I left my wallet atop a paper towel dispenser in a gas station bathroom and left. About an hour and a half later I stopped and realized my wallet was gone and had to turn back around and get it. I drove back and to my relief, my wallet sat in the same place I left it completely untouched. I then walked out to my car as snow flurries began to fall.
We were due for a bad winter storm but it continued to be delayed and so I took one look at the bridge and decided fuck it, why not wait it out and see what happens? Slowly but surely, the biggest snowflakes I’ve ever seen began to drift slowly towards the earth. Blue hour wasn’t far away and understanding it was now or never I grabbed my camera bag and began off towards the bridge. In a little while I found myself atop the bridge in a full winter storm, wrapped up in an ethereal bliss. The snow fell slow and steady as cars rolled cautiously below, the sky fell to blue, the entire world looked underwater in that moment.
I set up my tripod and a self timer and tip-toed meticulously across the bridge platform to the cable, my first step on the cable and I nearly slipped on thin ice as my hands gripped firmly on each side. I stood face to face with the storm, a cathartic, calming chill covered my whole body as I stood frozen in time. I returned to the road that night eager for coffee and a warm bed knowing it always paid to go the extra mile. Every experience becomes a part of us that we carry forward into the next, like the snow we accumulate slowly until eventually we look up and realize how much we’ve covered and how far we’ve come. The joy is in the journey and the beauty always in the becoming.
Memorial Day 2021, I sat across the table from my father and had a conversation that would change my life. A week earlier, 10 police officers burst in and pointed their guns at my head sitting eating breakfast at the table we now talked at, hauling me off for the third time. I could tell this whole experience was aging him, he never let on how much it hurt him to watch his son suffer this way but it showed from time to time. After proving that the ankle monitoring device that had been on me since April was being used to stalk and put my life in danger we finally got it removed before this night.
I told him I was thinking of shooting that weekend, that mentally I couldn’t go on without remembering why I was fighting. Without hesitation he told me to go and that I needed to do it for me, looking back I can’t imagine how much strength that took. Ever since then, I’ve recalled how it always comes back to the relationship of the artist and their art, the secret is always in the vulnerability, the going back time and time again, pushing your way towards something that is largely unseen; a path that unravels before you. I went that night and never looked back, taking those principles with me that what brought you through the valley will also take you up the mountain.
When I arrived here, I sat my bags down at sunset and sprinted down foreign streets, a rage inside me burning. Why did I still feel like I was in a cage? Invisible to being seemingly everywhere, broke to millions, breaking generational curses and still I felt like I was being overshadowed by something I couldn’t escape. The lightning flashed all around as I climbed the metallic spire, lightning rods on both side buzzing, charged with electricity but I didn’t care, I was hunting again, I was as alive as an artist as I’ve ever been. We live in the hunt, lost in our own world, healing ourselves as we create and healing as we project to the world, transparent in struggle of the never ending question of “Why?” I realized my healing and that I would bring to the world lied in always coming back to this place; an interminable loop of going back to the great search.
(Continued in comments)
There’s an intense intimacy in firsts; The first hug, the way you memorize their smell or where they place their hands. The first step into their place, the way they kick their shoes off and watch as you wonder aimlessly around their home making mental notes of the small intricacies they’re comprised of. The first kiss, the first smiles in between, the first nervous laughs that follow. The beauty in art and exploration is the continuous renewal of firsts. Seeing new places, discovering new feelings, creating new things from those very feelings. A constant cycle of reclamation of the childlike sense of wonder this world ceaselessly tries to steal. The purity of such moments cannot be understated. Perhaps our efforts of self-preservation are shrouded in our search for more, and in reaching for those things beyond we are actually clutching everything within ourselves we never want to lose. Things such as our humanity, imagination, transparency, love, faith and all the things that make up the best parts of us. Perhaps we are seeking ourselves over and over, in different places and different things, all we want to remain and every inside us we want to discover.
The highest selling photograph of all time is $6.5 million dollars. On April 9th, a year after my release date I launched an open edition of this piece, “First Day Out” detailing my return to exploring post incarceration. 10,351 editions were sold for $6.8 million dollars, making it the highest selling photograph of its kind to ever be sold.
Under my supervision and at my directing, 15% from the sale will be used in conjunction with the bail project to free incarcerated individuals is the Hamilton County Justice center where I was incarcerated on an unreasonable bond and suffered extensive police abuse only a year ago for my work. We will be working extensively to free as many individuals as possible with the funds as well as provide legal relief and post release support to make sure they have a chance at a healthy life moving forward. Hand in hand we will see it through in solidarity. This writing of mine from a year ago details my emotions today.
“There’s a storm inside of every good artist that nobody talks about. There’s an unwillingness of sorts...a realm of non-conformity that all true artists must pass on into before truly beginning to unlock the mystery of their depths. The principle isn’t one of puerile rebellion but rather of the protecting of something sacred. Conviction is sacred, what is honest is sacred, the whisper of a secret only the artist knows is sacred. The world seeks to pull the artist from this, to toss them to and fro on the winds of the storm. Time and time again the artist must find refuge inside themselves, with their hidden truths, scraps of paper and all their most precious things.
Times wax tempestuous, set on persuading the artist that they need the world while the artist braves the idea that in fact the world needs them. The artist is responsible for pushing their light forward in the midst of any darkness and at any given moment their sole purpose is the light. In the earliest of caves and throughout wars, in jail cells and beyond the light endures as the artist has endured alongside it; often times with their back completely to the world. And for now I cannot fathom a more beautiful thing.”
Echoes of doors banging rang out through F block, I turned around one final time to faces in windows raised fists everywhere.
Voices sprung from oblivion in a diverse chorus of empowerment as I walked out of one door and into another.
“Don’t look back!”
“Chin Up, Chest Out!”
“Keep taking those crazy photos!”
I turned down the Sallyport hallway discreetly brushing tears as I went, dumping my mattress and sheets into a messy pile. They handed me a plastic bag, inside a pair of white t-shirt, black pants that now hung off me and a pair vans. Those fucking vans man. Those fucking vans and all the places they had gone. Where was I going now? Everybody seemed to have different guesses but to me it was always clear. I had spent too many nights projecting dreams onto cell walls, there was no mistaking the journey in my mind; I was going to climb. There was no destination, the only goal was to keep climbing spiritually, mentally and physically; if I turned back now I was lost.
Those first warm spring nights fighting nightmares on the spare bedroom floor of my dads small apartment turned into summer nights still searching for answers somewhere in the dark behind the lens of a camera. The stakes were high, but what do you stake against truth? What do you stake against your freedom to exist as you were meant to and think freely? When you’re living your truth you’re at your richest. Beyond any fear of death or a cell lied a greater fear of living a fear based life and betraying my truth. That was death to me.
Here I stand a year later worn but not wounded, suffering but not silent, bruised but not broken, the flames that burned the bridges birthed the phoenix. Today is just one day of many taking back ownership of my struggle, the same art I was bound for will free countless others in the same place I struggled for my own freedom. Here’s to the ones that break through but never change for it, to the unreasonable thinkers and dreamers and those that understand the value of living their truth. The destination is still unknown but the climb is ever present, hand over hand every dream is in sight and the stars shine closer than ever. To the moon and never back.
Tomorrow is my first day out, the first thing statement I ever made socially to the world last year was
“Gloves on, let’s go!”
This was taken a myriad of ways but what I meant was let’s go punch for punch, I was on the ropes but I was ready to war and that’s exactly what would be asked of me. I was told everything-that I was foolish for not quitting, that I was insane for thinking I stood a chance and that I was unreasonable for continuing to push forward with my work in the face of people who wanted to bury me. The artist is responsible only for following the vision the universe has imparted to them, everything else is futile.
To me fighting didn’t just mean making it through the storm for myself, it meant coming back and succeeding in the face of the oppressor for those that look like me and have suffered through the same. I’ve been working diligently on a number of broader, more expansive projects that will do just that, one of them launching tomorrow on my first day out. I told everyone involved in that oppression, when I succeeded I was bringing the fight right back to the soil of Cincinnati and they would have to witness everything I would become. I told them it was funny now but that one day their kids and grandkids would learn about me in school. I always wondered what it would feel like when things came full circle, what one man could birth out of a dream and deep, resonating knowledge of self. Each day I’m learning more and more there is no limits to what can be accomplished with this knowledge. Tomorrow is just one step in taking back everything that was taken, tomorrow is one day in a much longer war, a year ago I was on the ropes but this year we’re punching back.
📸: @houtxtoast & @haddzes
A little Sothebys Recap. I’ve spent most of the last month reflecting and combing through old writings in my notebooks from my cell this time last year. There’s a grief that surpasses words when it comes to remembering every step from there to here, most days now I simply don’t try explaining it because I know it doesn’t translate much to people beyond a “really crazy story.” It’s hard to explain to friends and family how life is changing when you don’t even understand it most days, all you know is the dream is the dream even if it doesn’t always look like what you thought. I start every day with gratitude because of what could’ve been, there are irreparable scars inside to never let me forget that.
In a week I will have been out a year, I’m finding power in reclaiming my time, my joy and my peace. I’m finding power in separating myself from the dark and celebrating the light I’m walking into; understanding that I am much more than overwhelming trauma, I am gifted and genius apart from all of that. These are difficult days, days of tripping over my own feet wishing I was somewhere further along with not feeling so sad, so angry and so hurt all the time, knowing that no amount of success can heal everything it took. They’re also days of hope and peace, light flooding a rainswept countryside after the storm. Some days you spend wondering what surviving means, in latter days you find the answer, the purpose and the light. All in all, these are moments of gratitude where the sky opens up and the future illuminates itself even if for but a second and you breathe it all in. These are the early days of the other side.
Thank you @misanharriman for taking the portraits of my father & I. It was a moment I will never forget.
He told me
“Everything that the sun touches is yours.”
I sat with the idea of oneness for a while until eventually it was night after night, the thought that I was in everything and everything was in me; dreams of starry night skies and the catastrophic clash of clouds in every brilliant sunrise or sunset. In the end there is only purpose, truth and light, the choice to walk therein or to lie content without. Inside truth there is no good nor bad, we may be hurt and yet we stand unharmed, we may be wounded and yet we walk on undeterred. It is in truth and purpose that the spirit transcends the man.
The goal therefore ought to be a steadfast existence in this light, the holding onto our truth without relinquishing, I dare say nothing else in life matters because it is here that all needed things will find us. We are the sun that commands the earths orbit, we are only in a constant state of awakening to ourselves. Our awakening is contingent upon the time spent relishing in our purpose, the unrelenting pursuit of it, in time we will see we have possessed so great a light all along. We need only to find and surrender to our truth and secondly to the hands on time.
Time matures all things, in every passing moment all living things pass from life onwards towards death, and so we move from form to form, yet our truth remains steadfast. There is no controlling time, only being controlled by it, beyond capitulation time asks or rather demands of us trust if we are to grow into all we are supposed to be. In our purpose everything the sun touches is truly ours, but we must first learn to surrender to time and trust that all will come to pass in it’s proper hour. If we had our way we’d scarcely pick the trials, the days of longing and nights of agony but I’m enduring we find they were there to mold us into people that can truly hold the world in our hands.
Everything the sun touches is ours inside our purpose, in time and with proper faith always in that order.
Jail cell lullaby
Dreams of sunset painted sky
Before freedom could ring
A part of me had to die
What hell is this?
And what undying war?
After the storm
My spirit yearns for more
Murdered mind
Heart numb in disrepair
Days spent trying to find
When all of me was here
At home in the fight
This brutal existence
This terrible plight
Of permanent persistence
To exist, to be
Young, black and free
To reveal, to uncover
A world for you and me
And if the time comes
That I must die
May it please be
In free fall from the sky
And not at the end
Of the officer’s gun
Or shackled in cell
Wings clipped with legs that can’t run.
Jail cell lullaby
Dreams of sunset painted sky
Before freedom rings
I pray a part of me
Survives.
-Poetry for my upcoming book “Sunsets After Storms.”
A year ago I sat behind glass on a nearly half a million dollar bond and told my lawyer if he got me out I could do the rest. Those days are etched into the halls of my memories forever. The night before that court date Tez cut my hair and we talked about how there was a purpose for everything. I had always moved with good intentions and my whole heart behind my work, even when the world kicked me when I was down. When I got out, the goal remained the same-be an artist or die trying, not being defined by the forces trying to stop me but rather writing my own story.
Today I was the highest selling piece on the lot at over a quarter million dollars, the youngest African American photographer in history to be in Sothebys and the first urban explorer to ever be in the prestigious auction house. I always had dreams of more, irregardless of how short sighted those around me could be. Today is for all the lonely nights, for the dreams no one else could see but me, for my friends that never let me quit, for family that did the same and for every brother I had that did time or still is. This is for every phone call where you tell me my pictures still hang in your cell and that I give you hope. There’s no dollar value on inspiration and the highest human act is to inspire, if I’ve done that then I’ve done my job.
I’m thankful today. Thankful for the pain, the journey, for counting the cost and going on anyways. I’m thankful for the pain that’s still fresh, the heaviness that still lingers and the reminder that it wasn’t always this way. I’m healing, I’m growing beyond the anger of wanting to watch the world burn and putting it all back into my art because after the storm I refuse to let them control and define me. The world is waiting, if I were to die today, I’ve done everything the right way, I could go on in peace, but the everything awaits me and I haven’t reached the heights I plan to reach.
There’s work to be done, dreams to keep dreaming, people to free, wars to be won and so much more. My eyes are to the sky, my intentions are set and tomorrow I will wake up, keep healing and dream bigger than I ever have. To the moon and never back- Drift.