by L. Lamar Wilson | art by D’Angelo Lovell Williams
D’Angelo Lovell Williams can see right through you — as you peer, or perhaps leer, at them there eyes.
This child of the Deep South and its migrations understands what its histories’ legacies can teach those unafraid to learn what nearly 30 years has taught Williams, who is nonbinary, though assigned male at birth. (Here, the BS uses “he,” but Williams is also fine with “she” and “they.”)
Educated in a decade-long multimedia magnet arts program in Jackson, Mississippi, Williams was encouraged to draw from real life, not solely escape it. He took that good sense and its sensibilities to the Memphis College of Art, where he did undergraduate studies, and to Syracuse University, where he earned an MFA in 2018.
Like the work of iconic Black photographers Florestine Perrault Collins, Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, and others who paved the way for him, Williams’ digital photography advances conversations about centering all Black subjectivities, especially in stark circumstances.
Look long enough into his (self-)portraits, and you’ll see your own reflection — the most vulnerable, vainglorious, and, yes, venerable parts you might have thought you’ve hidden away — holding back a knowing grin.
With the end of the Afghanistan-based “war on terror” leaving us just as bemused as the feckless war in Vietnam did, Williams challenges us to acknowledge the survivors of the war on Black life all over America. Even as battles for autonomous Black spaces smolder and a mendacious tale of a “racial reckoning” wanes, his peerless, courageous work arrives blazing and unblinking. In the four years since his first show at Brooklyn’s Higher Pictures Generation, Williams has held three others there that prove all the racism and homophobia his generation continues to endure won’t dim the clarifying light of his art. From one of his earlier images, “Nah,” to “Blow” and “Gloryhole” — both from his July 4, 2018, show “Only in America” — to “Transference (Reprise)” and other family portraits in last year’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” Williams reminds us to see ourselves as spiritual beings always in conversation with elder and ancestral intercessors in this world and the existential and inevitable hereafter.
If Williams is any indication, the kids are alright, y’all. And if we dare to dream and frolic as freely as they envision, then we can be, too.
Williams and I talked for three hours about his coming-of-age in Jackson and Memphis, how he found his way to self-portraiture in and around New York’s art scene, and how he’s anticipating a photography trip overseas with his dad on the other side of this pandemic. In the past year, he’s come face-to-face with his own HIV diagnosis and engendered difficult but necessary conversations with loved ones — and himself — about mortality. What follows is an edited version of our wide-ranging conversation.
Untitled (Portrait), 2016
LW: You are of a generation who’s come into this anti-Black world with a fearlessness that challenges respectability politics. From whom or what does your fearlessness come?
DLW: My mom loved art and sculpture and music, and I was also interested in those things — clothes, fashion, things that were complimented on, that were very surface: a painting on my mom’s wall or something that she had on. … While I felt like being an artist was what I was going to do for the rest of my [life], being in Mississippi is hard for a lot of people living there who are interested in art. Their parents want them to make money. I didn’t care about whether or not my parents were going to support me being an artist. My dad wanted me to play baseball, my mom didn’t really care. There were all of these things that I knew I couldn’t talk about, but what I knew I could do is make art. ... What kept me, what keeps me, there is the fact that I could, I can, make something [at] any point and time.
There are so many talented people I went to school with who aren’t making art now, but I was determined to be an artist. … I was trying to build an identity, but I knew there were things that I wasn’t ready or felt comfortable to talk about at this point, like being gay, like any of my interests. I mean, I was pretty much bullied for many things — being overweight, the fact that I liked art, all of these things. That didn’t deter me from it, but just being in the space of not many resources and just pulling all of these things out of me was a lot, even in high school.
Photography seemed like the easiest to do resource-wise. Material-wise, I didn’t need much. I went to a small private college, so basically I did what I could do with what I had. And in that it kind of made me work harder because … I felt like I had to overcompensate for what I didn't have, that would help me make what I thought would be a better image. … But when you’re learning about art history, artists throughout history, and you see how much more successful non-Black artists have been over Black artists — and how many compared to Black artists — a lot of that was my concern. When I was first starting to make images or make a series every week to show the class, I was photographing my white friends. I wasn’t out in college, and I felt like I would, you know, lose my Black friends if I told them I was gay. I felt like I wouldn’t be liked. I thought my parents would find out, all that. But, yes, I’d photograph my white friends and kind of use them as placeholders for images that I would make about points in my life, or feelings that I had.
There’s Something About the Pressure, 2017
LW: Tell me the story of that first image of yourself, as you stared at it yourself. I’m interested in that very first image where you were, like, “Oh, gosh, why am I showing these white folks? Look at what I have here.”
DLW: One of the first images that I made in my darkroom class that I think must have been my freshman year was a self-portrait. We had seen some surreal photos, and it was basically a project where surrealism was the goal. And I made this image where I used an empty computer desktop. (I was interested in taking computers apart and fixing them, but, like, making things out of the parts.) I used this as a little mini-setup for this photo that I wanted to make. I got the idea of using the siesta — totally not something that’s a part of Black culture, but we sleep (laughs). … I take a photo of myself in front of this wall, where I can remove myself in the darkroom by blocking off everything around me and keeping myself visible when I’m exposing the negatives, so I basically am looking like I’m floating in this cloud space. That image, one of the images that was in that series, was the one that I was most excited about. Because I did love surrealism. And it took a lot to get that image. It still wasn’t a great image, quality- or tonal-wise, but the idea was there, and that's what I was proud of.
I had wrapped myself in some aluminum foil, like, it was wild. It was also letting me know what I would do for a photo that early on. And I had myself to do all of that. I’ve just kept that with me because anytime I've wanted or thought about making an image with someone or of someone and they’re not there, who do I have? Me.
I had just known what I had been seeing throughout life: images of models with super-fit and toned muscular bodies here and there and not a lot of heavier people, big-boned people. I wasn’t at the point of wanting to represent all of that myself, and I’m still not; I can’t do that for everyone. That’s not a goal, but it’s where my life meets with all of the people in it. I see so many different types of people, and that’s what I want to see, so it started with my own body: knowing that I had always been a heavier person, knowing that I don’t see many bodies that look like mine. I continued to photograph myself, not necessarily nude, but I started to make images where I'm looking at my experiences.
LW: In many ways, you liberated yourself and your father in the portraits you did with him. How did you get your dad to pose for “Papa Don’t Preach”?
DLW: I wanted to photograph my father, but the goal was to get him to be nude. That was something I wanted to see the results of. I didn’t have much time with him; he was working. And literally the images that we made, we made all in one day.
I’ll be up there in a minute, 2018
The image where we’re arm wrestling [“Daddy Issues”], that was an image that I had sketched out how I wanted it to look visually. It’s in his backyard. … The image where we’re in the field [“Transference (Reprise)”], I knew I wanted an image of both of us in the field. I didn’t know what I wanted us to do. And we were off on the side of the road and some woods, and I told him that I wanted to be naked. And he was like, “OK, whatever you want.” And then once I figured out how I wanted to be naked, where I wanted to be and set the camera up, I was kind of nervous because it was the first time my dad had seen me naked in person as an adult. I knew we wouldn’t really have a conversation about it, and I didn’t think we needed to, because he was OK to be in the image. But I really wanted to get as far as I could with the time that I had.
It looks like he's praying over a dead body, but there’s so much more. And there’s so much more that I want to get to. There’s an image where there's a person, my ex, his legs are dangling in a tree [“I’ll Be Up There in a Minute”]. And with that image, of course, knowing the history of lynching, knowing that when people see Black people in trees, that’s where their head goes, and I’m wanting more than that. Because I like climbing trees, I like being in trees, being elevated. I fear coming down more than I fear going up. Like, I wanted to talk about ascension, and levitation, and all of these other bodily gestures … just show what else there is.
Daddy Issues, 2019
The “Papa Don't Preach” show was originally going to be just images of me and my father, but the pandemic kind of cut that short. I had already made the images of my mom [“Until We Separate”] and my grandma [“Was Blind, But Now I See”]. The image of my mom and me was in my third show with the gallery, the year before “Papa Don't Preach,” which was last year. But the image of me and my grandmother with her hand over my face, that image was in “Papa Don’t Preach.” Kim Bourus, who deals at Higher Pictures Generation, and I make an edit of images for what we want the show to be, and we do a pretty tight edit. Since I didn’t have that many images of my father and me, other images kind of also made sense. The image of my grandmother and me, the image of me and my ex where my head is under the palm leaves, the dead palm leaves [“Elysian”]. These images were kind of not exclusive to love, but just like touch and intimacy and kinship. And also this intergenerational lineage that I rarely saw in a lot of images.
LW: Yeah, it’s so powerful. And so how has your father responded?
DLW: People [have] asked me how I’m so comfortable with photographing myself nude. I don’t know, I just felt like I was removing myself from the work so much that it wasn’t really me. But it is. And also in that, I’m surprised my dad wanted to be in the images with me. A lot of people find it intimidating. But he wants to be in the work.
LW: Talk about your interrogation of the divine mother and the divine feminine, not only in that image, but I see it in two of my favorites, “A Day Apart” and “Untitled (Portrait),” where you are in the gold dress in the water. And “Nah.” I'm interested in how you see the divine feminine manifesting in your work and how you are deconstructing this toxic masculinity.
DLW: In learning how people present the feminine or the masculine, even when I was a child, I had always felt more drawn to the feminine because it was softer, because it was nicer, because it felt comforting and not so demanding of something that I was required to present like masculinity. Until, you know, my mom is like, “You’re a boy, you like these things, you don't play with dolls.” So that blocks off or that makes me feel like I have to block off a lot of myself.
… For me, I didn’t have many male inspirations. I felt like I was always feminized. Just based on how I looked, people thought I was a girl for a long time. Just because of my roundness, my green eyes. It was hard because, of course, then, I’m like, “I’m not a girl.” And now I’m like, he/they/she are my pronouns. But knowing that, once I did come out, what I'm making images about, what I’m putting on my body because clothing is gendered — everything really is a performance. And that’s what a lot of my work that I was making in grad school was getting to, like performing masculinity and performing vulnerability, [asking] “what is vulnerability?”
Until We Separate (Mom), 2019
Mama’s Always Watching, 2017
[Vulnerability] looks feminine to a lot of people. I wanted to get to, more specifically, how to hold people accountable with just images, or see whether or not I could. So that’s when the gaze became very prominent in my work on top of this reclaiming power, by not looking. By wearing whatever I wanted on my skin or not wearing anything. Because the white men who have photographed Black people have never lived the experiences, have never even begun to have the same ancestry or history as Black people and people of color could manage to capture in an image. But that’s who we have to look to … who have documented our lives. So I wanted to like what has been in my life, and most of that was the feminine, because that’s what I wanted there.
What does that touch look like when it’s two men? Or two brothers? Or two queer people, or however many, whatever … — what is the result of the interaction, the physical bodies touching but there is no sex? What does it look like when fluids or chewing gum comes from my mouth to my mother’s mouth to represent birth? And it gets to this vulnerability and the sense of connection that is much deeper, it’s pulling things outside of the body and bringing them to an audience.
And hopefully, it reaches whoever needs to see something like that. I just know it’s something that I wanted to see, it’s something that I pulled out of my own body and presented. I, myself, in having to undo a lot of gender normativities, welcome the divine feminine. I won’t say I'm anti-masculinity, but I am like, you know, what’s that? Just based on experience, it’s not something that has been pleasurable in the way of living … a masculine life.
LW: Whatever that is.
The Lovers, 2017
DLW: I associate that with caring. Everyone should care about themselves, yes. But masculinity affects the feminine in ways to where it affects children in ways to where it affects the upbringing of it all. … I would say, in an artist’s statement, “Black gay men appear throughout the work as sitters, lovers, a helper.” I say I’ve changed the language, but it’s hard to just place these labels and descriptors on Blackness and queerness. …The word “queer” hasn’t always sat right with me because at this point, straight people can identify as queer, and I’m just, like, “I'm not straight. So am I queer?”
LW: You’re giving birth to a new language about queerness in your work. What is in gestation in “A Day Apart”?
A day apart, 2018
DLW: I knew I wanted to talk about giving birth outside of needing a woman to do it. I wanted to have two men in a dress, but also I was just thinking more so about the science of it all, of coming out as a full-grown person during a visual that’s representing or reflective of birth. The gesture of it all was exciting to me because I was like, “OK, this is lively, it’s performative, it’s intimate.” So I’m under the dress. My friend, the photographer Clifford Prince King, is who you see and we kind of look alike. In knowing that I had this dress to use and wanting to see what we could do. Originally I wanted to be standing with Clifford sitting on my shoulders and the dress to cover us both. The dress wasn’t long enough to cover Clifford while he was on my shoulders, so that led me to being on my knees to where we look like another form of people, or like a four-legged person. … Clifford [and I] are both Libras. His birthday is on September 28; my birthday is on September 29. And we’re a year apart. I’m a year older. But I titled it because our birthdays are a day apart. I would say, sonically, outside of us, are the workings of the world, astrological things, consolatory things, so that’s where my head is at. There's this rotation of this cycle of things that are working in our favor.
LW: What role does the natural Southern landscape play in your work?
DLW: Within the landscape, there’s no furniture. You’ve got trees, you’ve got fields. … What do you do in that space? And that’s what I have to make up. And that depends on the performance of whatever I’m doing, or my interaction with other people in that space, which is what I’ve seen as a challenge that I’ve wanted to overcome, like, what to do in the landscape? I don’t think it’s more of a challenge now, but I’m becoming more expansive about what that [space] is for me and the people who constantly show up in my work and more than likely will continue to grow as well. I’m probably gonna not be photographing all the same people forever, but I have been more inclusive of nonbinary people in the work. I identify as nonbinary now. The work is inclusive of nonbinary and trans folk, chosen and given family. Because that’s what my life is reflective of. There’s a lot of feminine energies, a lot of very high femme energy that I want to have around me. I don’t consider myself a legacy builder, but I feel like I am guided by my ancestors, ones that I do and don’t know, and will come to know in the future.
Was Blind, But Now I See (Granny), 2019
LW: In this new work, especially the “Hieroglyph” series, the gentile meets the gentle meets the genteel. It’s very Southern and so very still, so beautiful.
DLW: I think in the stillness, there is still a lot of motion. But the stillness is what is so impactful because it’s, like, I don’t consider them moments in time. I like to think of my work as past, present, and future. I think all of that’s happening at the same time. … So you’re creating something out of a stillness when you look at an image in trying to decipher and break it down. … I’ve wanted to portray this sort of gentleness and calmness when I’m photographing myself and I’m by myself and I’m looking into the camera. I’m just, like, “OK, this is me, this is who I am. Regardless of what you see, there’s more to this, because I'm going to show you something else. And you are either gonna relate to this or not, but it's still coming from me.”
Hieroglyphs, they’re language to tell a story, but also to inform … and I wanted to use the Black queer body as a language. …We don’t have [many references] for how things look when Black people are being intimate, and our bodies touch but we’re not having intercourse, we’re not trying to procreate. We’re just in these mundane moments wherever we are. The interaction is the interaction.
But it’s gotten to the point where it matters. I know a lot of images of younger queer people and older people aren’t in the same realm or stratosphere. “Threeway” kind of gets at that. There’s an older person and a younger person sitting on some steps, I’m under the steps, and my hands are grabbing both of their legs to stimulate or get to this idea of a three-way conversation … also a reference to three-way calling and sexual three-ways.
I’m wanting to see where all of these generations cross paths as close as I have been able to get to them and, not bridge the gap, but show that we’ve still got a lot of communication to do. We’ll never be done in a lifetime. But we do have each other in the ways that we’re not told that we do, or feel like we do.
L. Lamar Wilson is the author of Sacrilegion, a Thom Gunn Award finalist; co-author of Prime: Poetry and Conversation; and associate producer of The Changing Same, which streams at American Documentary and airs on PBS. Other poems and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared in Poetry, Oxford American, The Root, and elsewhere. Wilson, who spent nearly two decades in the nation’s top newsrooms, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, has received fellowships from the Cave Canem, Ragdale, and Hurston-Wright foundations; is an Affrilachian Poet; and teaches creative writing, African American poetics, and film studies at Florida State University and Mississippi University for Women.
Header Photo: Untitled (Portrait)
All images courtesy of the artist and Higher Pictures Generation.
