Ancestral altar for Chef Leah Chase, Queen of Creole cuisine, an outtake from the Original Innovators feature for Food + Wine Magazine
I almost didn't write this. It seems a peculiar thing be known as the person who got into a fight with a hand-pie, of all pastries, but here we are. I want to be fair to this hand-pie, but the g-d hand-pie stole my shine. It stunted on me, you could say, and I, admittedly, feel a way about it.
I have a sixteen-page feature in the February 2020 Issue of Food + Wine (at newsstands and anywhere you get your magazines, now). That is, for a young photographer, a HUGE piece of real estate in a national publication. I worked for over ten years to get that feature, and five of those years I spent reading every single piece of information I could find regarding the African contributions to American foodways and dedicated my photographic practice to documenting these contributions in real-time. I am an expert in this space. My expertise was even invoked as a part of being considered for a massive project illustrating the contributions Black people have made to cooking in America. Four centuries of contribution. Without us, there is no American cuisine. Periodt. And yet. A 'super-flaky hand pie' got the cover, relegating, not only my work but that of FOUR CENTURIES OF WORK BY BLACK PEOPLE, to an afterthought.
Just how does any photographer shoot a sixteen-page feature package and not get the cover?
Answer: The photographer is Black.
Expanded Answer: Black womxn/femme labor is historically devalued.
With that devaluation comes the idea that the sixteen pages are enough of a boon to my career; that photographing a large feature package released during Black History Month written by an acclaimed Black (food) historian, accompanied by recipes by prominent Black chefs, is enough.
I should be thankful and grateful for that.
I'm not.
I worked for ten years to get here. I was homeless for this. I was in poverty doing this. I don't have a trust fund or a partner's income to rely on, nor do I have social networks to have been ushered into this world, neatly and without an immense struggle. I struggled to get here and I cannot count the amount of times I've almost walked away from this. I planted my garden. I watered and waited and plucked weeds, and so I want my fucking roses and I want them, now, in real-time. I worked for that. I been good. I'm only getting better and this feature is evidence of that getting better.
At least one would think. One would hope.
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after moving to Los Angeles and transitioning into editorial photography, I really wanted representation. I felt good enough, smart enough, and kind enough to deserve having representation. I was told, often by reps, that the process often takes decades and that I shouldn't get over-eager, as though I had not just ended a very successful career as a documentary wedding photographer, as though I had not been working already for over eight years. I like to think I knew what I was doing and I wanted to have my career guided by someone who also felt the same about me. The opportunity came by way of a photo editor at a newspaper publisher who was rooming with my ideal agent: a queer woman of color with good connections who would never question or judge me when, inevitably, things devolved into that quicksand trap of the intersection of my race and my gender.
My agent scored me some pretty amazing meetings, like the one I had two years ago with a dream publication, Travel + Leisure.
It took two years before that meeting turned into a job.
Sit with that for a moment.
Now, think about the random Chads and Ryans who have come out of nowhere snagging these jobs that are very well paid and often the difference between retaining photographers of color or losing them, forever. These opportunities are what helps to create an even wider race and gender wage gap because they almost always go to 1-2 photographers consistently, over 6 issues, over 8 issues, over 12 issues. We're talking about making anywhere from $60k to $120k a year shooting editorial work. Why are those opportunities over-represented by white, male photographers?
Answer: Money
Expanded Answer: White supremacy maintains itself by ensuring the ruling racial class gets to 1) own a majority of or all of the wealth in an economy or industry, 2) allows the ruling racial class to make decisions about how and who that wealth is disseminated to using informal, social economies like nepotism to ensure the wealth stays with the ruling class at all times.
There is a reason Black talent has not been able to penetrate executive decision making positions in publishing. It's money. And the influence of power that comes with the money. Always follow the money.
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That job lead me to an inquiry: how often do I work with publications who are just beginning to commission Black photographers. So, I asked my editor a question and she provided me some very important information:
I followed up with a friend of mine who once worked at Meredith (formerly Time Inc) for over a decade and was able to verify for me that no Black photographer had ever been assigned a cover in the fifteen years he'd been working.
I asked this question because another Black womxn photographer asked the same question of an editor at Rolling Stone upon being commissioned to shoot a cover for them last year. It was the first time in RS existence that a Black photographer photographed the cover. I'm pretty sure last year was 2019 and not 1919 or 1921 or 1940 or 1963... The publication and artist leveraged this information in such a way that this photographer began to shoot covers frequently and dominated -- as she should have -- editorial photography last year. Just two years prior, she could not make a living as a photographer because no one was willing to give a Black woman with a camera benefit of the doubt the way they do the Ryans and Chads of the industry. I thought not only was it a brilliant move on her part, but I saw the benefit of leveraging the heavy title of being 'first', in complicating the narrative of what it means to be 'the first'.
'Firsts' reveal the insidiousness of the ideology of white supremacy stunting the careers of people of color. So, when the Universe sent a feature package my way from Food + Wine, after having just shot for another Meredith property (Travel + Leisure), armed with the sad and infuriating information that a Black photographer had never graced a cover on any of the Meredith's magazines, I went about shooting my shot:
I was met with, what I thought (naively) at the time, was enthusiasm
You can imagine my shock, then, when my food stylist sent me the below text
And by shock, I mean anger. The above email wasn't enthusiasm: It was subterfuge. I knew a few weeks ago we weren't getting the cover when I inquired to receive PDF tears of both the cover and feature. I got radio silence, instead of an actual response. White silence is often coded: "No, I did not do the thing I know was right and I should have done. I cannot reconcile this and I don't like conflict so I will keep my mouth entirely shut in hopes of avoiding any kind of discomfort whatsoever"
I wanted the opportunity to ask: How do you justify making a decision like this? The hand-pie itself is from a smaller feature, farther back in the magazine. It's more incidental than anything else. What angers me most is that I couldn't be told by a group of fellow adults that a different decision was being made. I certainly would have given them all some righteous hell for choosing a hand-pie over the beautifully designed altar we made in honor of Chef Leah Chase which would have made not only for a dynamic, eye-catching cover, it also would have been one way for a group of white decision-makers to do something radical and challenging and they would have been rewarded richly for doing so with magazine flying off the shelves and possible awards, but I'm starting to think that's not why people get into this business.
Don't get me wrong: I am endlessly proud of those sixteen pages and I don't take for granted that precious real estate BUT I am very tired of Black aesthetics and stories and people being used for the purpose of bolstering white publications. I'm tired of people using my expertise and my deep love for my community to fulfill the role of being able to be woke-adjacent. I need for white decision-makers to get serious about righting the wrongs of having so often excluded people of color from our own stories and our own histories and our own contributions for so long.
Plus, if I am being honest, that hand-pie looks dry and unappetizing as fuck; a reflection of the flattening limitation of the white imagination so I guess, in the end, they made the right call.
Good for them.