Shawn Theodore

Interview by Alina Cohen

In his ongoing series “Afromythology,” Philadelphia-based photographer Shawn Theodore captures his Black subjects in regal, mythic postures. They wield swords, gaze directly at the viewer, recline against ornate furniture, and look towards the sky as though they’re communing with a higher power. Even Theodore’s earlier, more documentary series, The Avenues, which features Black residents in gentrifying neighborhoods, generates a sense of magic and reverence through the interplay of shadow and light.

In addition to shooting his own photographs, Theodore serves as a senior lecturer at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and works as the director of Los Angeles gallery ParisTexasLA. Since 2017, he’s shot editorial campaigns for major brands and publications including Paper Magazine, Roc Nation, The New York Times, and The New Republic. Before COVID hit, Theodore’s last assignment was shooting the cast of Showtime’s “The Chi” for Los Angeles billboards advertisements.

Throughout all his projects, Theodore remains committed to “decolonizing the camera,” or rethinking the power dynamics between photographer and subject.

Alina Cohen (AC): You’re teaching two classes on the history of photography this fall. Big topic! What do you emphasize in the course?

Shawn Theodore (ST): In both my teaching and my own work, I’m most interested in decolonizing the camera and giving agency back to the subjects. We often forget that the camera was a symbol of power. I try to get my students to reconsider what and who are in an image—we might ask if subjects have consented to have their photographs taken, or if subjects may have been under duress because of the camera’s power. These inquiries help them understand current issues of agency and identity.

AC: Along those lines, I imagine that there is, unfortunately, much to talk about regarding how the media has covered the murder of George Floyd and police brutality.

ST: There's no shortage of images to work from these days. We are both fortunate and unfortunate that one of the most heinous murders of a Black man was captured in nearly 360 degrees. It’s fortunate in that photography finally shows the truth. It’s a truth that’s been echoed for generations. How long have people been saying, "This is what happens when Black people are encountered by police who have no sensitivity or may just be outright racist?” It's unfortunate it took a man's life to bring us that truth. I don't know when people who create deaths in communities will finally change their behavior, realizing that they’re being filmed. The missing element is accountability—when will photographic and video images uphold justice? As a teaching professional, I won’t turn a blind eye, and I see this as a chance to educate students. I may be the first Black man who's ever taught them. There's a lot there for me to engage with. Sometimes you get students who are not very culturally sensitive, or you get students who have just not been exposed. And this is their first opportunity to have a dialogue with a Black man and hear other people's opinions outside of whatever cultural bubble they’re from.

AC: Curious to hear more about the texts and particular images you use in class.

ST: The Black Female Body, by Dr. Deb Willis and Carla Williams, is one of my favorite texts to teach. It looks at how the Black female body has been captured as an oddity, or as a site for experimentation and exploitation, throughout photographic history. I love that book because it shakes my students. Black and brown women are leading the charge in our current civil rights struggle, and depictions of Black women’s bodies offer an entry point into discussions of politics, race, and power. It’s challenging—there will be Black women in the classroom, and they will not back down from what they’re seeing and feeling. The immediacy of their reactions is real. You get greater conversations from it. Way more realistic than just—'Oh, this photographer was really great and did daguerreotypes and found themselves being beloved for centuries.' Like, so what?

The Winds of Africanus, 2017

Photography

40 x 60 in.

AC: And you connect these issues to the present.

ST: Exploitation still exists—and is evolving—through surveillance technologies and doxing, and things like that. When we’re being monitored all the time, we have to think about the policing and commercialization of our images.

AC: Tell me more about your attempts to decolonize the camera in your own work. How do you reconsider the relationship between photographer and subject?

ST: When I was doing street photography, I wanted to create this romantic view or discovery of urban spaces, Black neighborhoods being gentrified. Initially, I was drawn to the notion of what happens to the self as the objects, spaces, and places around you begin to disappear. In other words, what happens to the Black body and mind in vanishing Black neighborhoods? What happens when buildings are torn down overnight and rebuilt in a new way that’s not welcoming to you? When you’re being pushed out of familiar spaces? These questions led me down a rabbit hole, thinking about how identity is created by story, folklore, legend, and neighborhood conversations. That hyperlocal storytelling can be its own mythology.

I wanted to find out what was happening in the academic space around African American mythology, and I couldn’t find anything. I developed this term, “Afromythology,” at a time, around 2016, when the Afrofuturist movement was taking everyone by storm. I wanted to create allegorical images that spoke to this missing space. In my work, I began playing around with the idea of subjects on the street who possessed a sense of power and magic. The first body of work was called “Church of Broken Pieces.” That turned into my first museum show, at the African American Museum in Philadelphia here. It premiered alongside Dawoud Bey’s “Harlem, U.S.A.” show. It was the first time I publicly started to address this need, this desire to see work that wasn't futurist. I didn’t think the futurists had adequately acknowledged a sort of conglomerate of Pan-African mythos, or had synthesized their movement with African American religion and folklore. There is a great amount of borrowed language and ideology from West Africa that's migrated to the United States, but nothing that’s codified into mythology. I wanted to create a new archive that worked towards this end. I wanted to challenge the Afrofuturists not to reappropriate the work of European artists or Abstract Expressionists. Black artists keep appropriating imagery from the Renaissance, but these images are still representative of supremacy. Why can’t we take all that away and create something fresh, new, and uniquely Black? Black in the sense that Blackness is an American invention. Blackness is not something that arrived on the shore with enslaved people. It is something that the enslaved people, as they became more and more free, developed.

“There's no shortage of images to work from these days. We are both fortunate and unfortunate that one of the most heinous murders of a Black man was captured in nearly 360 degrees. It’s fortunate in that photography finally shows the truth. It’s a truth that’s been echoed for generations.”

AC: So you’re using specific source materials from Western African history and generating your own new mythology.

ST: Yes. I’m doing heavy research, making sure I’m not reinventing a wheel. But I also want to make art that, while respectful of its roots, is entirely new. I look to Africa, and the past, for brand-new answers. Christine Kreamer’s African Cosmos has been an invaluable resource. African Ceremonies by Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith. But I’m also looking at the work of Terry Adkins. His pieces are magical, splendid, and otherworldly on their own. I look at religious photography. There’s a book called Come Sunday: Photographs by Thomas Roma, documenting the Black church experience. There is a great sense of mysticism, which I’ve used as a sort of base. What else? The Black Female Body, of course, and Migrating the Black Body by Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Leigh Raiford. And then there's Christina Sharpe's book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Fred Moten’s Black and Blur. The Geometry of Being Black by Ogorchukwu. These are really just fantastic books to feel out the spaces. Finally, I can’t forget Black Africans in Renaissance Europe by Earle and Lowe. Really just a great, great resource.

AC: Tell me about that one.

ST: The book documents the lives of people who were at the center of change in Europe, but also at the center of negative change in Africa. They were the wealthy and powerful of Africa, and some of them—if not most of them—were involved in the early days of the transatlantic slave trade. It’s one of the only resources on this topic.

AC: I wanted to get into the details of one of your works—The Salon of Oluchi Oneya and Leenos The Forgiving (2018). It features two women in floral-patterned dresses, positioned in this ornately decorated room. There’s this aura of mythology and fairytale. Can you tell me how you transpose your research materials and your own ideas into this frame?

ST: In that piece, we're looking at sister gods, or sister deities. It’s an idea you see in a lot of European work—the Janus object, with two faces. I wanted to break out of that paradigm. I didn’t want to find twins, but to speak to a sense of individuality. So I’ve got two models. Although these women are a council of sorts, they have different roles to play—how they deal with the living, with each other, and with other spiritual entities. They’re in repose in this salon. I'm kind of stealing a great deal from the Orientalist painting compositions, but I'm adding in things that are of substance to African American culture. One of the most important items is the quilt. It’s from the South, handmade. In African American culture, quilts have been a communication device. They were early technology, signifying codes along the Underground Railroad. I'm fascinated by how beautiful and meaningful they can be, and how they suggest a very literal code switching. Art can do that too.

There is a root of a tree that has been cut down, and that is to symbolize the ending of lynching. It was a very important piece of the entire composition. And then there's an empty cage, referencing the book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This was initially a commercial job for a magazine. Given the opportunity to shoot a quarter million dollars worth of jewelry... I'm not going to say no to that, but I'm also going to do it in a way that uplifts. The funny thing is, the jewelry is often lost in the discussion of the work. People are transfixed on the women themselves, and these $125,000 necklaces are just sort of there. But there is indeed a connection to Africa and its diamonds. We can go on and on about who owns the diamonds, and that was the easy part to have represented in the piece. But what was going on inside the piece, you have custom made dresses for each model. The models are regular people I encounter in my work, whose characters evolve as I continue to shoot them.

The Oath, 2017

Photography

32 x 40 in.

AC: In 2017, you started painting your models’ skin black.

ST: That’s the most important aspect. I began painting Black people’s skin black to represent them as spirits or deities. To have godly figures represented within the living. It’s like having your ancestors present with you and guiding your steps, and structuring your life. What does it mean to have those conversations about the ancestors and how they should be represented?

Of course, this brings up issues of blackface. I wanted to attack the way that blackface has been used as a racist, political tool—with something so beautiful you don’t even connect it to something so ugly.

AC: How do you paint the models?

ST: My friend, the make up artist Eboni Kennedy, does it with me. It’s a blend of different make-ups. I want to give space to Eboni and other Black women who work with me to be creators, then move on and do something else. One of the bigger issues is making this stuff look realistic. It has to look like bare skin. It takes about four hours for each model’s makeup, hair, and clothes. These shoots take four to six months to plan.

AC: What was it like to shoot that major Paper Magazine feature?

ST: I was shooting the job with a good friend of mine, the director Ali LeRoi. He's known for being the co-creator of Everyone Hates Chris, and he's one of my best friends. I shot Colin Kaepernick who is cool, very reserved. But meeting Angela Davis... a little bit better.

AC: Tell me more about that.

ST: It was the last shoot for the project. It was Colin, some of his relatives, guys from his team, and Angela Davis. It just became Angela, Colin, and me talking for a good hour. It was this once in a lifetime moment where I’m taking pictures of them, but there’s also a conversation. Here you have one emerging legend, and one bona fide legend, just dropping gem after gem. It was like—this is the best thing ever.

AC: Can you give me an Angela Davis gem from that day?

ST: It was just—the power of using yourself to engage with contemporary issues. Being fearless about speaking out. She was just giving us courage. I've never felt so inspired.

“I began painting Black people’s skin black to represent them as spirits or deities. To have godly figures represented within the living. It’s like having your ancestors present with you and guiding your steps, and structuring your life. What does it mean to have those conversations about the ancestors and how they should be represented?”

AC: How have you managed to straddle this line between the commercial and creative worlds, while undermining the structures of power?

ST: I’ve always made a conscious effort to spend my time, effort, and energy working for Black businesses, or businesses that have the best intent in mind for Black folks and Black markets. It was hard a long time ago, and now everybody wants to have a Black creative to call upon. So it's a lot easier now, and nobody wants to be on the wrong side of what's happening. And I respect that. There's a great deal of intent that you have to unpack, because the corporate structure or urgency does not belong to me. Sometimes, it’s just blackface all over again—corporations aren’t making changes, just putting a Black person on their problem. I don't like to work quickly, and I don't like to answer phone calls for companies that only want me to address just Black issues. There are also issues I won’t tackle: I don't know the struggle of a first-generation or second-generation African immigrant family. I will refer to those people who are doing those jobs. That's not my check to cash.

When I work with companies, I'm very upfront about what it is that I'm going to do, and how much control I'm going to exert over it. I will take in your brand needs. But I'm not going to create solely through your eyes. This is what the act of decolonizing the camera is all about. It’s important to have African Americans shooting African Americans, but also it's important to have African American messages being devised by both the person in front of the camera and behind. And someone has to be sitting at the table as well. There has to be a voice. If I come to your offices and I don't see anybody that looks like me, we're going to have a problem there, too. Those places need to change their hiring practices. I don’t like this label of “other” for Black and brown folks. Why are we “other?” It’s like, who put you in the center? Right now, you’re actually not. I like having those kinds of conversations. There are some well-intentioned, quote unquote, allies (I don't like that word either) who have yet to do the real work to unpack, decolonize, and get rid of their racist notions. And it's good to have those conversations with them to let them know, 'Hey, you still got a lot of work to do.'

AC: Why don't you like the word “allies?”

ST: It's an absolute. It stresses that you've already done all of the work, and that you are finished with your knowledge base. And that is never going to be true for anyone who's not, quote unquote, of color. You're going to have to do that for a lifetime. Because you spent a lifetime living in that space, it'll take you a lifetime to overcome what it's done to you and people around you. We need to come up with a better word.

Not So Satisfactual, 2017

Photography

47 x 54 in.

AC: How do you feel about “anti-racist?”

ST: Sure, I’d prefer that, because someone’s addressing the fact that at some point in time, they may have been racist. You have to rest with your hate to get over it. And sometimes the hate is so insidious that you've never even noticed it was there.

White people are taught that racism is just lynching and killing people. And they don't understand that there's nuance. It starts with privilege and works its way up to murder. And that's a hard thing to hear when it's pointed back at you. The idea that privilege doesn't hurt anyone is incredibly naïve.

AC: You’ve built an enormous following on Instagram. How do you feel about the platform as an educator, a photographer, and someone trying to think about issues of representation and image ownership?

ST: Instagram was great when I was just starting out, trying to present myself and connect with others. Instagram was this really great landscape for connection, and I was on it six months after it started. But now, people aren’t looking for images. The bulk of the audience is there for news, or memes, or videos.

But I still like Instagram for one key reason. When the uprising around George Floyd's death started to really reach a crescendo, I was using my platform to share as many resources as I could find. And I have 70,000 plus followers, even if they’re not all paying attention. But I reached a quarter of a million people by sharing information. And I started to rethink what the platform is good for with my access to people when things are happening. I'm looking to be a conduit for change. So what if I get 3,000 likes on a picture? If I can reach 250,000 people because they're looking for ways to support people who are out in the streets protesting for their rights, that's where the abundance of usefulness comes for me with Instagram.

Alina Cohen

Alina Cohen is an MFA candidate in fiction and a writing instructor at the University of Montana. She previously worked as a Staff Writer at Artsy.net and has published freelance work in publications including The Nation, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and The New York Observer.