February 2014: I’m looking through photographs I made during the winter of 2011 on the third floor studio of 144 West 125th Street. It was about this time of year—January, February—in the reflected sunset light cast by the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. building across the street. During my time there I kept thinking about the complicated point where Black and gay history meet in Harlem, and the shadows cast by the generations of leaders in one struggle that often existed in opposition to the other. The social and political stances of the Powells’, both Senior and Junior, against the visibility and participation of gay and lesbian people in the struggle for racial equality were indicative of their times. I often thought I wanted to stage a photograph of a big queer gathering in that winter light, but I never got around to it at the time. In a way, my project from the Studio Museum Artist-in-Residence program ended up being just that—over the extended time frame of the residency itself.
Note: The text overlay in the picture is from George Chauncey’s book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1980–1940” (1994).