Good Question is a Love Story for New York Blackness and Queerness
These photos are about a larger story between myself and the neighborhood of Harlem and uptown, New York, and it’s blackness and it’s queerness, and in the way it has provided me with a safe space explore more of myself and my journey as a pole performer, in addition to my journey and experience as a lawyer, in addition to my journey and experience as a queer woman, and the way that all of those different aspects of myself have found a home in this neighborhood, because of the way Uptown retains a very specific authenticity that hasn’t yet been commodified.
We chose the setting of walking through the streets of Harlem to capture my urge to rebel against the confines of my identity but with an elegance that we normally associate with “respectable” dress and behavior rooted in respectability politics as a whole.
We chose the setting of the ⅔ line and styling in a rainbow-inspired dress reminiscent of the pride flag to celebrate my pole practice in a way that harkens back to child-like joy and exploration that Black femmes are not provided space to celebrate often enough.
We chose a C-town grocery store as our final setting to honor the places that my neighbors can still shop at, that still accept WIC because these are the folks who have given me space to show up as expressively and as uniquely as I am in all my Blackness and Queerness.
Importantly, the lens that captures my self-expression is through Plum’s view of the world as a non-binary queer person, what that means for capturing black femmes and our connection to ourselves and our environments, rather than through an objectifying perception. Plum’s portrayal of me is about capturing the way I relate to my space so that it’s not so much about perceiving me, or gazing upon me, but being with me in the space, and offering the viewer of the images an opportunity to stand next to me and amongst me rather than to devour me in the way the proverbial and literal male gaze does.
This shift in gaze and portrayal is really important to us because of the way that black femmes are so often taken from in our society. There’s a real rebellion and a real revolutionary nature to asserting the validity of the black queer existence and black community without applying an exploitative gaze.
Creative Concept: Plum Thorne & Sigourney Norman | Photography & Editing: Plum Thorne | Styling: Plum Thorne | Model: Sigourney Norman | Hair & Makeup: Sigourney Norman
