Hank Willis Thomas in conversation with Will Steacy

By Will Steacy
December 4, 2008
Hank Willis Thomas has made name for himself with work that deals deftly with complex issues like race, class and history through a wide variety of approaches including original photographs, appropriated advertisements and films. However, it is not the breadth of his work that sets him apart, but his ability to subtly tie these broader cultural examinations to his own personal history; indeed, he cites the tragic murder of his cousin Songha in 2000 as the basis for all of his work. Given the grace with which Thomas dances between the universal and the personal, it is of little surprise that he has swiftly become one of the most prominent photographers of his generation. The publication of his first monograph, Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) is the result of being awarded the first Aperture West Book Prize -- an award designed to honor, promote and publish photographers living west of the Mississippi. He recently sat down in New York for the following conversation with Will Steacy.

(top: The Cousins at Aunt Leslies Wedding, 1999; bottom: Philadelphia Daily News, February 3, 2000) Spreads from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas.

Will Steacy: The opening pages of Pitch Blackness feature images straight out of a family photo album, along with dates, locations and even that weird sticky background. While of course being very personal, these back-in-the-day images also feature the stereotypical vacations, holidays, family events, etc that fill most family photo albums. That is, until we reach the newspaper clipping, Good Guy Slain for a Few Bucks and soon after a picture of your cousin in the morgue and his death certificate. How did the family photo album theme come about while putting your work into book format? What story did you want to tell? Hank Willis Thomas: When I got asked to apply [for the Aperture West Book Prize] I really didnt want to. I had been working on my family photographs as a book concept, but I never thought that the Banded work could fit into that book. I couldnt see how they could be drawn together, but I applied with some of my family work, some of my Banded work, and when I got the award I was charged with putting the work together. It was like, How do I look at these photographs of my family that I was doing simultaneous to the Banded work, how do I make them make sense? Since so much of my work is inspired by the murder of Songha, it felt weird to leave him out, but it also felt weird to assume that people would care or know what I was talking about.

My introduction to photography from a personal side was as a young child looking at those very same photographs [in the book] and other photographs of our family, and saying, Whos that? What was there? I thought that family photo albums are something everyone can relate to and have so they can relate to the person that they were often in photographs with. Telling [Songhas] life in that family photo album is almost an immediate way of getting viewers to be able to relate to or understand who he is, or even who he is generically to any one of us. So as the story unfolds I think you can really understand how tragedy happens, and thats why we used the news clipping rather than write an artist statement or essay to show the public version of the story. So it starts to move from the very personal to the public, and personal with the Death Certificate and the morgue image, and then on to some more family photographs and the building of the connection between the family photographs of the funeral to the Priceless work, which I think introduces the Banded work. It really was just a long roundabout way of figuring out how to fit the Banded work with the other work.

Banded, Black Power, 2008 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: What does Sometimes I see myself in you, which was the title piece in your recent collaboration with your mother [Debora Willis], mean to you in terms of your work? And what does I see in you what you dont see in yourself (which I believe Deb said) mean in terms of your relationship with your mother? HWT: I do look a fair amount like my mother and everyones always said that. It wasnt until more and more recently that [I saw that] there are characteristics of her that are undeniably in me, and I like to think that there are characteristics of me that have also influenced her. When we were doing the show Progeny, I was doing work about parents and children my mother was doing work about parents and children, but only a month before the show did we realize that we were both doing work about parents and children. Because we talk about family stuff more than we talk about our work stuff. It was a really obvious reminder of how these thoughts go through our minds and affect the way we think and what we want to make and focus on. As for I see in you what you dont see in yourself, I think thats pretty deep. WS: A lot of your work explores the advertising industry. What intrigues, inspires and infuriates you about the relationships between art and advertising?

Banded, Basketball and Chain, 2004 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

HWT: As a child of the 1980s and the explosion of cable and media culture through the expansion of the NBA, ESPN and MTV unlike the previous generation maybe even just 10 years older than me I learned most of the information that I understand about the world through television, magazines and more and more, the internet. This new generation is learning more from the internet than from anything else. I think what society has not totally come to realize is that, not just

for nostalgic reasons, popular culture is our culture. When archeologists and historians look at our culture, advertising will be a major factor far more than it has been in previous discussions or understandings of history and culture, or other cultures. So Im really intrigued by it, because it says so much about our hopes and dreams at a given moment all the things we want to believe about ourselves, or all the things we want to believe are possible about the world, are often implied or exploited in advertising. Its like societys desires bared naked, thats what I love about it, but I also realize how much our distorted understanding of history and cultural morays and things like that affect how advertisements are created and how we read them. I really see advertising as a form of brainwashing because you have to be media literate to some degree to understand it and theres this language built upon it. But in general, especially as globalization has occurred, there are conversations happening all over the world with these transnational corporations like Nike, who are communicating the same or very similar messages to people in China, to people in South America, to people here, which is beginning to make us all think more and more alike. Im really interested in that and in what ways of thinking are getting lost and forgotten about. So in my work, Ive often tried to just help us be more aware of what were talking about I focus on African Americans in part because it feels like its speaking directly to me. I feel like when you look at a demographic, whether its teens, or women, or whatever, you start to see what specific myths and generalizations are related to how the world should see them. But Im more interested, in some of this newer work, in looking at how other ethnicities are poked fun at or caricatured. And now that African-Americans especially not necessarily Africans are more absorbed into the mainstream, who is the Other? Whos now going to be our... entertainment, for lack of a better word or our servants to improve our lives?

Bearing Witness: Murders Wake, Ebony Brown from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: I am interested in your approach to photography, specifically how you use the image. You are constantly redefining, altering the original meaning and embedding your own meaning within the story of each piece. You also seem to have your hands dirty in many other mediums. How does your collaboration with words, sculpture, film, graphic design, friends and family, contribute to your photographs? Is the photograph for you just an endnote, a final product, and is it more about the act of creating, the process? HWT: What I learned in photography school for eight years was that I am a good photographer but Im not a great photographer, meaning that I can take a good picture, but I cant consistently take the pictures that I love and I am not necessarily interested in [working that way]. Im much more interested in the context in which the picture is viewed or made. That is what led me to do other collaborations and to experiment in other mediums because I was forced to deal with my limits as a photographer and the limits of photography in my work. Everything is so informed by so many other things and people, I like that in a collaboration the authorship is blurred, you dont know who specifically has done what and therefore the critique has to be more sophisticated. You cant just say he did thisits theyso you cant give it a unilateral critique. And especially with Cause Collective collaborations its multi-cultural, so its even harder to label us in a specific way.

Aunt Leslie at the House, 2002 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

I always used to think about at what point in the history of American literature was there more work produced in day than a single person could read in their lifetime. I thought about that for years and years and I realized, at least in photography, there are more photographs created in a day than any person could really absorb in their entire lifetime, which is crazy! So now there are millions of photographers, how do I distinguish myself? But more importantly, whose job is it to look at these images and make sense of them? Is it the roll of artists and historians to look at what we are making and critique it in our time or just wait till 50 years from now and then try to understand it? So I see myself and certain artists of my generation as the DJs of the late 70s and early 80s where we are remixing and looking at imagery and making new imagery of comprised imagery.Its beyond collage, I think its a blending of it, its a whole new image thats created and thats why I started to work with advertising. Its a challenge because advertising is becoming increasingly sophisticated and its hard to keep up with it and make valid work.

Songhas Grave, 2002 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: The murder rate in Philadelphia has skyrocketed in the past two years to where senseless murders like that of your cousins occur at an alarming frequency. The story of an elderly woman who was shot and killed after she told some kids to get off her stoop so she could get into her house is one example. The harsh realities your work examines often force the viewer to respond. By addressing the pain and trauma that are associated with the aftermath of violence, what do you ask of your viewers? What are your intentions? Does art have the ability to spark awareness and/or create change? HWT: The most I feel like I could ever ask of my viewer is to just think twice before they act, whatever they do, just to think twice. I wonder if Lawrence, who killed Songha, thought for a split second that this decision could affect him for the rest of his life. He didnt even rob Songha, he had what he wanted, he took from other people and what is it he gained from doing this to someone else or what it is that he lost? Just that simple thought is this worth it? Whether that comes to a guy grabbing a girls ass in a bar or just very simple things that we do without realizing the overall effect it may have on someone. Am I my own person when I put on my clothes and choose what I am wearing when I walk out and relate to other people? Or am I being informed by things that I am not even aware of? I am just trying to get people to really be aware of it. I think art has a limited ability to create awareness and affect change. One of the most brilliant quotes I ever heard was by Charles Long, whos a sculptor; he said that we live in a society that is now so organized, with our Ikea and our K-Mart and the way men and women are supposed to dress and what we are supposed to do in our down time with our PDAs and the internet everything is so incrementally organized that we dont have time for the organic side of humanity where you just sit and are aware of whats going on, or do something just to do it.

Unbranded, Petey Wheatstraw: The Devils Son in Law, 2001/2005 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

He said that the job of the artist is to work in our societys unconscious. Its that artist who is taking some string and paper and plastic and gluing it together, who is trying to allow us to think beyond the formal ways we look at a bottle,

for instance, or anything, and to think of them as still things that can be created from. I think that when we go to look at contemporary art and we dont get it because it just a block of paint or whatever, we forget that our minds are trained to be organized and to think a certain way and we are not allowed to expand on simplicity or the absurdity of something. His argument is that artists are really valuable to our society because they do what the society itself can not do, otherwise we turn into robots. We inform the world, we inform life. I dont know if it is directly going to affect change, but I think the fact that we have a certain portion of our society whose job it is to make us think about what we are looking at or the things we dont have time to think about in our daily life. We are pushing society forward and hopefully we can help to challenge things we disagree with, but in general I think we are working on the subconscious, and I am happy to be doing that. WS: For some people, their work is an escape, they enter another world, but your work is a nose-dive into your own reality, your family, your identity. At times it must be difficult and painful, but there also must be a therapeutic and healing quality to it as well. Has your art and the act of telling the story strengthened you, helped you come to terms with things? Can you talk about what it has been like for you to face certain issues head on instead of looking the other way?

Winter in America from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

HWT: I would say in general that art has strengthened me. However, it was my survival strategy being able to be in school with such wonderful professors and peers who supported me in being able to talk about something that was very hard, and to make work about it and even critiquing that work which was so hard to make in a loving way, was really beneficial for me. I think I became a better person and better artist because of that. I dont know if you can ever face certain issues head on. In general, I dont know how to face head on that African American men seem to have a distain for one another that is greater than [the distain] they have for anyone else. Its directly tied to the myth that we are the same, and there is a self hatred and there is a thing that African American men see in one another, a thing that they despise or envy, but really its something that is going on within them and it is more often than not taken out on other African American men or taken out on women, but in a very different way. So I dont know how to deal with that head on and I am not done with that. However, the work has been a cathartic process, and having to do the book and finish the book which takes 8 years of work and actually puts it in context has really forced me to work through even more stuff. So now it all makes sense, but what do you do after that? There is such a thing as too much therapy. I dont want to have a career that is so masturabatory it becomes about the nuances of my loss. I have been fortunate enough to be able to live and make work about something that is really important and that affects other people. I think the most important thing is not to do it to death, and let the work live. What I would like to do, and what I havent figured out yet how to do in my work and which is the real challenge right now, is to make work that is beyond being about myself, but beyond myself in a positive and open minded way that can translate to other people. For my own work, it is important that what I am talking about is something strangers can engage with [and understand]. I think that self-awareness makes the work that much harder because I am anticipating an audience, rather than just making work in the freedom of my mind maybe as I mature that can happen.

In Loving Memory of, 2007 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: How do you nurture the initial spark of an idea into a fully realized project?

HWT: So the idea I have in mind for my next show which I have had in mind for two years now is called the Myth of a Black History. I dont know exactly what that means, but I am trying to examine what black history is. Is black history somehow separate from history? Typically when we speak about black history we are talking about African American history and not Afro Caribbean or Afro South American or African or Afro European history for that matter. We really only tend to speak of African Americans when we talk about black history month what stories are being excluded and what is the hierarchy? How much of these ideas are just myths? Did this actually happen or is this something we created as a way to respond to this other history that has been told? And so the history that has been told of African Americans is a lie, and to some degree we have been told this lie to make our history greater than it was our history is no less important yet no more valid than any other history within the United States. I think black history month was an invention that was created in a time when it was needed, because our history had been totally falsified. What existed was ignored and people did a lot of important research to put things at the forefront and there are things that were embellished that we believed in. Now we have a black president and black governors and we have Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Lil Wayne and Oprah and none of them are empowered because of black America, they are empowered because of America. We forget that white people are a large part of black history and so I am trying to understand how to take apart this idea how in black history there was George Washington but there was also George Washington Carver, there was John Brown who was white but there was also Nat Turner who was black its American history, not just black history or white history. I have been looking at a lot of books and reading a lot and nothing has come out, but I have 3 months to make something of these ideas. The biggest challenge was that I had to wait until after the election to really make work. I wasnt sure what I could do until after the election and now that that has happened I have a new challenge to make work that is of the time and that is mature. We are now in a hopeful time and a lot of my work has been better at being critical than hopeful.

Unbranded, Smokin Joe Aint Jemama, 1978/2006 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: Obama seems like he might fit into your work somehow. Here is a man who is half black and half white, yet in America if you are half black, you are seen as all black, yet he was mostly raised by his white grandparents. A lot of your work focuses on race and identity, white America sees him as black and many black politicians and leaders such as Jesse Jackson expressed skepticism of how black Obama is. Obama will surely continue to be the subject of many conversations for years to come, but what are your thoughts on how Obamas multi-racial identity might impact Americas understanding of race and identity?

Unbranded, Slack Power, 1969/2007 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

HWT: I think his multi racial identity is America. Thats why I thought of this show about this myth of a black history. There are hundreds of thousands of white people who are technically black based on our understanding of black and white and they just dont know because their parents or grandparents never told them and most African Americans are part white. So we have always been a cultural hybrid. I think [Obama] exemplifies the greater complexity of this because he grew up in Indonesia, which is Polynesian South Pacific, and in Hawaii, which is 2% black, so he was a minority within the minority. His worldview has always been greater than any of ours because he teetered on the line of black and white but did so also in Asia (for lack of a better word). So I think the idea of him as a post-racial individual really is exemplified. And he is not a descendant of a slave, he is a descendant of immigrants and that speaks to the complexity of what blackness means what is it that African Americans have in common with East Africans? Some of us have similar complexions, but culturally what is that? So is he more African American because he was raised in America or is he more African and American because he is a descendant of Africa? So that complexity speaks to how we can no longer racialize or genderize people as a way to categorize them so we dont have to deal with them as complex individuals. His campaign has been about, I am not who you want me to be or who you think I am, I am myself, and you might like this, which is the great thing about Obama. I am also suspicious of who he is because I dont think we really know but the alternative was much worse.

Banded Head from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

WS: For the past couple of years now I have been keeping this list in my head of projects I would commission specific photographers to do if someone ever put me in charge of a foundation or something. I would assign you to explore how black identity and its stereotypes have been adapted and appropriated by other ethnicities, specifically with language. How often have you heard on the subway or walking down the street Latinos, Asians and even whites using the word nigga with ease and nonchalance? With a sharp focus on certain words and phrases, as well as the adopted accent or pronunciation, could this perhaps be another chapter in the vein of the Banded series? What are your thoughts? HWT: Well this is another major part of this black history idea. Black people have given the world the license to speak about us and to speak about each other in a way that is inherently derogatory but as a form of affection. I saw these guys who were South Asian and they were like, nigga this, nigga that, my nigga, fuck you, blah blah, and that has informed my work. And with BET and MTV, what is blackness? In this project, reflections on black in corporate America really speaks to how these ads were created by mostly white men on Madison Avenue trying to understand what they thought black culture was and what they thought black people wanted to see and then placed these ads in black magazines. So then black people saw them and were like, This is who we are and what we are, and then they reflected that back into the world. Then mainstream America was like, Ok this is what the urban cool is and so we are going to appropriate that, and it has become this vicious cycle of corporations like the ones who put out these albums and, to some degree, affect their content. They tell black people, This is what you want and this what to believe about yourself. And black people believe this about themselves and then white people and Latinos but we are mostly just our own slaves, that we are at the core the soul of America. These corporate ideas (which are really marketing), have informed the way that we see ourselves and then the way that others see us is ultimately reflected back to us.

Gods Hands on Grandmas Wall, 2003 from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008) Hank Willis Thomas

I am highly engaged by how blackness is something a white kid in Omaha, Nebraska, can easily [appropriate] to become blacker than me because that is the way [he] chose to socialize [himself], because of the magazines or newspapers [he] reads or videogames [he] played, and that is [his] identity. So, black identity is not an actual identity it is a corporate identity, it is a corporate understanding and it always has been, from slavery up until now, it has always been a fabrication. Where do you go from there? How do you get people to realize they are individuals and they should be individuals? How do you get black people to see that as long as we define and relate to ourselves as black people, we are clearly limiting ourselves and our ability because most of us, if not all of us, are not black? I have been all over the world and I have never met a black person. I have met dark skinned people. I have never met a white person either. We are lying to ourselves and lying to each other when we label ourselves as these really basic white/black things. If anything Im Zone IV and you are Zone VII, [laughter] and even still there is no hierarchy, you need to have all of them to have an image.