Profile 004: Dario Calmese, Photographer + Academic
Dario Calmese is a multi-hyphenate artist and brand consultant whose artistic practice includes photography, academic writing, and curation. A pivotal part of the development of Pyer Moss, Public School, and even a catalyst of change for the partnership between Gucci and Dapper Dan. We speak with him about his journey and get the incredibly candid, emotionally honest, and detailed inside look at how he has become the person he now is.
So what do you do professionally? What’s the fullest description of all these wonderful things that you do.
I really sit at this nexus between art, fashion and academia. On the art side, I have my own art practice as a photographer. Academically, I usually write about cultural issues and/or deconstructing images. My source or my references are always in academic journals, but I write it in a way that's easily digestible, but really coming from the understanding that images are not benign. And how do we re-see, how do we really deconstruct and break down the things that we're seeing? Because when we don't question them, we agree to them. The ways in which images and the idea of celebrity—all of these things that are perpetuated throughout the culture—we have all of these subconscious, unconscious agreements that we make when we don't question, or at least critique the things that we see. We have to look at them with a critical eye.
Then in the fashion space, I work as a commercial image director. I work alongside creative directors to help flesh out their vision. Whether that’s in campaigns, e-commerce, directing their fashion shows, whatever their visual language is; I make sure that it's all cohesive and that it speaks to the brand ethos. I do a deep dive into each brand and make sure that everything makes sense. Designers are not always the best people to tell their own stories; they have a story and they have a brand ethos, but how is that fleshed out in casting, in the show, in lighting, in typography, and all of these things?
So how did you get there? These three different places that you're at. They all fit together?
Well, I think the basis of it is storytelling. I just tell stories in various mediums. My background is as a performer, as a singer, as a dancer, as an actor. And so in that way, I have developed a really strong sense of character and narrative storytelling. And for me, fashion is theater. You know, in many ways it's all the same people, they just have different names. You still have lighting, you still have costumes, except they're called fashion designs and the costume designers are called fashion designers. The actors are called models. So it's just really taking one thing and putting it on top of another.
How I got started in fashion…. I started working at Public School when I was in grad school at SVA [School of Visual Arts, New York] and they hired me as a photographer. But it was their first presentation in February of 2012, and somehow I ended up in the production meeting… and somehow I ended up speaking in the production meeting. I have no idea how this happened. But they quickly realized that I was more than just a photographer. And so they put me in charge of casting for that season. At that point I was testing models, so I knew all the agencies and I had relationships with bookers. Then after I graduated, Dao-Yi [Chow, co-founder of Public School] sent me a message and he's like, “I don't know where you are, but we're not done with you. So whenever you get back” – I was in Southeast Asia – “We have work for you to do.” So then I came on board at Public School, as their visual director. So I was shooting their campaigns, their lookbooks, styling all of their e-commerce, casting their fashion shows; if a magazine reached out and was like, “Oh, we want to do a feature on the boys and we need five looks” -- I did all of that.
And that was because Public School at that time was really small. It was just Dao, Max [Maxwell Osborne, co-founder of Public School], a guy who did production and myself. That allowed me to learn so much about the fashion world, as well as how to tell a brand story that I was not familiar with. I was not familiar with their references. I had no idea what they were talking about. But I love to learn. So I went and I studied EVERYTHING they said that I didn’t understand; I wrote everything down. I looked at their mood boards. And I just studied until I was able to regurgitate or speak the language that they were speaking.
And for me, that was a very useful skill. I learned that that's something that I can do not only with other brands, but also in a scaled out form for companies or for municipalities. As long as I have access to what something is, or the essence of something, I can learn that language so the things that I create feels like the brand. It has the brand ethos, even though it still has my stamp on it. And so that's what I did with Public School. I mean, that's what I do at Pyer Moss as well, as I did with Elizabeth Kennedy, as I did with Steve Aoki and his [fashion] line. I do a deep dive into the brand until I learn it’s language, it’s unique vowels and consonants.
And I'm also really good at taking someone from where they are to where they want to be. And for me, that's super important. Like, “Where do you want to be? How do you want to be perceived? And, how do we get you there?”
Well, how do you do that? What does that look like for you?
So with Public School, when I met Dao, at the time, they were considered “Urban Streetwear” even though they were making tuxedos, beautiful overcoats and things like that. But because Max is Black, Dao is Asian and they both grew up in New York, [the fashion community] just wanted to [label them] “urban streetwear.” And Dao was like, we don't want to be that. We want to sit next to Raf Simmons and designers like him, and that's a world that I understood. I understand what that imagery looks like. And so I was very specific in the way that I cast the show.
I knew that off the bat that we couldn't just come guns blazing, like, oh, we're going to use tons of black models. We’re going to have a super diverse cast. I knew that the cast had to look the way that the people who were looking at us [and labeling us] were used to; so it was very European, blue-chip slim boys, like all these other brands. I was really specific and deliberate with that decision, and also the way that I shot the imagery. I shot it very beautifully, very clean, very classic like a Dior campaign, but infused with New York sensibility. My thought was if people can see the brand in this light, then they'll start to think of the brand in this light.
So I used the casting, e-commerce and the way that I laid out the clothes artistically, very graphic -- just pure, white -- to help shift their image, at least visually. The clothes were already amazing. So once Public School started to really take off that's when I knew my job there was done. Again, “Where do you want to be, and how can we get you there?”
That's the same thing I did with Elizabeth Kennedy. She made stunning dresses. She was the head designer at Isaac Mizrahi Couture, so that's the world she comes from. However, her imagery at the time needed a revamp, and so we started working with higher end models, better locations, elevated lighting, all of that. Kerby [Jean Raymond, designer and founder of Pyer Moss] -- exact same thing. Got in, figured out who, what, where he was from, what his references were, what's important to him. And then it takes a while... I've learned that it takes about three seasons to get there.
So that's about a year and a half?
About a year and a half. You want to make an evolution, not a revolution; you don't want it to be too jarring. For example, Kerby loved motocross and that world when I first met him. I think Shia Labeouf was the archetype. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my question is, how do we abstract that? How do we push that and make it a little bit more palatable to the fashion crowd? Because taken literally, that style of guy doesn’t fit clothes. They're going to look bulky, stocky, thick. And so that was one of the first things I wanted to do: slim that profile down, but retain the essence. I started out with casting, and again, kind of like with Public School, it was a very small operation. I ended up directing the fashion shows because Kerby would have these wild ideas—and I’m always game for wild ideas— about how he wanted the models to walk on the runway but couldn’t quite figure out how to choreograph it. Plus, he had a collection that was about to hit the runway. But again, I have a background in theater, dance, and production, so I started taking on more and more responsibility until I ended up just directing the show. I think that has been a really successful collaboration. We really, really have developed a relationship of trust. We egg each other on. We gas each other up. We both enjoy disrupting the status quo. And now I feel like we’ve spent so much time together that he knows that he doesn't always have to be there for me to know what he’s going to like. Of course I always run decisions by him to make sure they’re on-brand and authentic, but generally I’ve learned what's going to work and what's not going to work, to free him up so he can concentrate on the collection. When Kerby and I have an initial meeting, I ask him, what are your thoughts? What do you want the show to be about? Okay, cool. You work on the collection and I'll work on this stuff and let’s regroup. I'll check in with you on the way. Step by step by step. Total collaboration.
So how did you become comfortable enough with your own eye to be confident in those types of situations?
I think just time and experience. I'm always looking. There was a pivotal moment when I first began shooting when I realized why a model had to look a certain way. Why their proportions have to be a certain way; because it photographed differently. In the beginning of my practice I would just shoot guys that I thought were cute. But I was like…[laughs] the guy's good but the pictures don't look good! It was because they weren't real models. So when you understand design, or the way that clothes are designed, you understand that designers work on croquis. That's what it's called, that little figure that you see in the fashion illustration. Proportionally, a human body is seven to eight heads tall. But croquis are 10 heads tall, because it elongates the line.
And when you understand the croquis, then you understand why fashion models generally need to be tall and thin. Because they mirror the croquis; it mirrors the actual thing that the designer works with as it elongates and exaggerates the lines and the proportions. And that was like a big wake up call when I first started shooting.
And then my mother's a seamstress. So I grew up with clothes. I grew up with fabric. I grew up thinking about how I wanted my clothes to look because my mother would make clothes for me. So I wasn't coming into fashion ignorant of fashion. I’ve always had expensive taste, I always chose the most expensive thing, always; without ever looking at the price. Why we live in a world where good design is only reserved for those with means is another question. And I think that's something that works really well for a lot of brands. Because again, designers know fabric and cut and drape and all of these things, but all of these other peripherals they may not be as versed in. Some are, but many are not.
How did you learn about all of this, and study for it?
Well, first, I have two undergraduate degrees: one in psychology, one in mass media communication. So I already had a basic understanding of how things are perceived: the psychology of perception, evolutionary psychology, and even cognitive neuroscience. I used that in how I write show descriptions even, because I’ve studied people and human behavior. And then my master's is specifically in fashion photography. At SVA my teachers not only taught me about the history of fashion, photography and photography in general -- so I already had a library of reference images and things like that -- but also, just the fashion system. I learned so much about the fashion system, the fashion calendar, the ways that editorials are scheduled, the market, all of these things. So I came into these spaces knowing a lot about the world that the designers are already in. And so I was able to speak to that as well.
And I'm kind of a hybrid person where I'm not fully a right brained creative; I'm really kind of half and half. And so I can think creatively, but also think quite rationally and business minded as well. And so I use the creativity to drive whatever business decisions the brand is making or where they need to be. I don't get into the business of the brand specifically, but I have a general understanding of it.
And so you mentioned theater. How did you go from theater to psychology to photography?
Well, theater and psychology I did at the same time. So I started performing professionally when I was 15. Singing, dancing, the whole thing. I became a member of the actors union when I was 18. I moved to New York as an actor traveling around the county and the world performing. I was a lead in the Chinese tour of Broadway’s Aida for months. But I always had this... what I've come to learn was a false notion; I thought that you had to either choose art or academia. I didn't realize that they could work together. That was something I was always wrestling with.
And so even though I had been performing since I was 15, when I got to college I decided to major in Psychology because that was also my interest. I wasn't quite sold on being an actor so I was a double major in psychology and theater. I went to a small Jesuit school in the Midwest and but I was performing professionally during the summer and on breaks, I realized nobody gave a fuck if I had a theater degree from a small Jesuit school in Kansas City. So I switched my degree to communication and was going to go to grad school for either cognitive neuroscience or psych assessment, which is making tests like making personality tests, like Myers Briggs, that organizations use. But I couldn't decide, so I was like, you know what, while I'm deciding, let me go to New York and try this acting thing out.
But acting as much as I loved it -- and I did some great stuff -- I never felt fully fulfilled, because I felt like it was still just a small part of me. I felt like I had more in me, that I was just using a small percentage of what I had; I had this full academic background that I wasn't using.
I had a free ticket to Europe from an ex and I decided to just go, and went for three weeks. I wanted to buy a nice camera to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum to make a calendar for my mother. That's really all I wanted to do. Then my friend convinced me to buy what I found out to be was a DSLR. I’d never heard of it. I did know you could buy a camera without a lens. [laughs] He's like, “You'll figure it out.”
So I took the camera to Europe, learned it (I brought the owner's manual with me) and fell in love with this process of taking pictures. Because I felt like I was using my analytical and my artistic brain. So now through this camera, these two worlds that I thought were very different and very separate kind of came together. I could use my mathematical, rational, and technical brain to create something artistic. That's how I kind of fell in love with photography.
I came back to New York and continued to act and shoot at the same time. The pivotal moment was a friend of mine who was a blogger at the time. She asked if I could shoot Fashion Week for her…it was for free. And I also had booked a show, I booked Chorus Line. It was my favorite role; I love the show. But I couldn't stop thinking about shooting this Fashion Week thing. And so when I was supposed to go in and sign my contracts with my agent, I turned the show down, and he almost threw me out of the window! [laughs].
During that fashion week, I met a model whom I thought was just stunning. I took photos of him, and then it turns out that he was with one of the top men's agencies in New York. The agency loved the pictures so they started sending me more models. And that's how I slid into fashion. But I never wanted to be a fashion photographer.
Do you consider yourself a fashion photographer though?
Hmmm. I consider fashion photography to be one of the things I can shoot. Yeah, but I never wanted to be a fashion photographer. Because it just felt like it was a whole other beast.
But I was again, always a student. Always curious. I was always taking classes... in typography and branding and logo design and dream weaver, in metal smithing and anything I could learn; I was always taking a class. I'm always curious. Yeah, and the funny thing is, I just love learning shit. Unbeknownst to me, all those classes I took would later inform the work that I do now. So when I work with these brands, I can speak not only about photography, but I can speak about various branding elements, like typography. I can talk about x-height and kerning and leading and know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, to a degree.
Looking back over your life, what have been other pivotal moments where, looking back on them now, you understand that they shaped who you are today?
I mean, kind of like yourself, you just grow up with these things and don’t think about them but those are the very things that you end up drawing from for the rest of your life. That's the creative well.
My mother being a seamstress, which I already talked about. And then my grandmother's a ceramicist and a painter, and a pianist, and a singer. So I grew up with a lot of art and all of these incredible ceramics. She'd enter competitions and win first, second and third place. I was hanging with her when I was last in St. Louis—she's 85 now—and she gave me some manuscripts that she was writing. She has been writing romance novels. I couldn’t fucking believe it.
Then there was growing up in the church and singing, and my father being a pastor, and directing the choir. I also have a musical background. I studied piano, I can read music, I've arranged music, directed choirs, conducted musicians, all of that. And unbeknownst to me, again, those are all things that I would end up later doing in fashion. For me it's crazy to be in fashion; not only directing Kerby’s show but literally like directing the choir at Kerby’s show. Selecting the music, helping the musical director with arrangements.
Later when Vogue reached out to me to open their Fashion Fund Gala, I had to do it all. I actually had to arrange the music, get the music written, rehearse the choir, get the musicians, get them together -- and also conduct it. Which sounds like a lot, but it wasn't anything that I hadn't done already. And for many people, I think from the outside, they were like, “Oh, wait, you do what?!” But it’s always been there. So I guess, you know, growing up in the church was a huge, huge thing because there's just so much that you learn there.
How has your work forced you to grow as a soul?
I think it's helped me realize one that I have a voice. And this is speaking from my personal artistic work actually and my writing as well.
There are things that I want to say, there are things that I'm interested in, but I didn't know that they had any value. Nor did I realize that the things I was thinking were different than what other people were thinking, or at least, willing to say. That the things I was interested in were different from what other people were interested in. It has always taken someone else to see it in me.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to stand by that voice. To stand up to people who maybe dissented, or said, “That's not exactly what we were looking for,” and having the strength and the courage to say, “Okay, that's fine, but this is what I'm going to do.” Funny enough that's happened to me a couple of times; where people have commissioned something. And I'm like, this is what I'm doing. And they see the photos and are like, “Could you maybe...you know, try something different?” And my response is [sighs]...”No, no, this is it. This is what it is. But that's okay. If you don't want to use it, that's fine.” Only literally... only for them to come back. Like a month later, like, “Actually, you know what, we loved that.” That has literally happened multiple times. And that has been amazing because what’s happened is that most of my clients trust me and let me do what I do, they give me the space to play and be wild, which is where I exist the best anyway.
When I did this commission from CFDA, it was the same thing. And for me that felt really great because I shoot now these surrealist nudes...body parts, landscapes, things like that, but it wasn't something that many people were doing or that they understood. But I loved it and I knew what it could be. I knew that it wasn't too far from being a commercially viable thing. And I had to stand by that. I had to stand by this way of seeing. Because when I was shooting “fashion photography” it just looked like everybody else's fashion photography. And it's like, “Okay, Dario, you can shoot that and that's great and I hope your ego is happy, but what is your eye?” What is it that I'm interested in? And even though it was very different, I knew that if I just kept at it – kept refining it, putting it out there -- that it would somehow end up manifesting itself. And it took about four years. I mean, in the art world, it did not take four years, but from a commercial world it did take that long. But you know, I'm here.
Who were some of the people that saw you before you saw yourself?
Artistically, Deb Willis.
I did this series with Lana Turner in Harlem. And for me, it was purely just a project. I bought this film camera; this was when I first started shooting film, I had never shot on film before. And I met this woman at church. She had this incredible wardrobe, living this extraordinary life. And I was like, well, this just has to be documented, and so that's what I was doing. I was just documenting her wardrobe. That's it. And I ran into Deb Willis. I had no idea who Deb Willis was, I didn't know anything about her. But she was a friend of Miss Turner's and Miss Turner was like, “Oh, you should show Deb those pictures that you were taking of me.” And so I showed Deb and she was like, "What are you doing with these?" And I was like “I don't know… taking them?” [laughs] I don't know. And she's like, “Can you email these to me?” So I emailed them to Deb and then next was an intro to a gallery. And I was like, oh…okay.
So a lot of my process has been intuitive. Like I just kind of create and, and then when I look back, like at this work with Miss Turner, or the other things I'm doing, I realize that I've been doing this for a very long time. That all of my background is infused in these images, that it had a greater use than just taking pictures.
That was a big thing.
Even when I started, when I started writing, that all came from a show description that I wrote for Pyer Moss, for the first show that I really directed, the Double Bind show. And again, it was infusing my psychology background with my early academic background and my fashion background, and it was really just meant to be a show description. Then the [fashion] editor at Huffington Post was like, “This is amazing. Do you think you could maybe flesh this out a little bit more into like, 800 words or something?” And I was like, yeah, sure, I can do that. And so I wrote this whole kind of treatise on double bind and the way it described the Black experience in America. That's how the writing started. And that article went crazy, and I was like, okay, maybe... I don't know, maybe I have something to say. And people are interested in the way I put things together. And that was it.
What is the role of vulnerability in your work? If any.
I mean, if there's any practice, I think the practice is a practice of being vulnerable, or of taking bigger risks. I'm vulnerable to an extent but I've always liked existing in places of control. As the photographer, as the director, there aren't too many things or spaces in my life where I don't have a say or don’t really have the final say. But I also work well in teams, I love to collaborate. It helps ideas become even larger, more substantial.
However, I’m not afraid to put myself in places where I don't know anything. I'm totally fine with not knowing something. And I think those are the big moments of growth. When I just show up. Because I've spent so much time with myself. I have no problem being by myself. So I guess vulnerability does play a big part. But I don't feel too vulnerable because I’ve learned to become comfortable myself.
When was the first time or where the key times that you felt seen within your industry, or industries?
Artistically maybe the thing with Deb. But the thing was, although she saw me, I didn't see me. She saw something I didn't see and I had to catch up to it. And so the series with Miss Turner, I didn't even publicly show it until...the first was the Harlem, Harlem School of the Art Show. And that was 2017. Yeah. And I started that work in 2012. Because for me I'm a student first who thinks that if I'm going to do something, then I need to know everything about it, for better or for worse. And so I just started studying; studying people, workers, going into museums to look at printing, looking at framing, looking at sizing.
So then when was the first time you saw yourself?
As an artist? Recently. I would never even say I was an artist. I would say I'm a “creative” because [artist] felt like such a big word that was super loaded. I don't know. Shit, maybe last year, the year before that. I don't know. I think I just had to own it. I started to immerse myself in the art world. It was a world I had no clue about, not one iota. So I just made decisions thinking, I'm going to understand this.
So it was kind of validation around my ideas. Because again, you know, I have these ideas, but I'm like, is this important? Does anybody care? And I started to realize, and particularly when I started writing, and I think writing was even crazier, because even in the fashion world, my words went further than that images did. And that was huge, like a big wake up call.
I still think your article about Gucci is what allowed for Dapper Dan and Gucci to happen.
Yeah, maybe it did. Because I just asked. I called Dap’s people on the day I heard about it. I got his number from Kerby. I was like, did you all know about this? And they were like, “No, we woke up to a bunch of text messages.” And that's when I realized that the story that Gucci was telling was a lie.
Maybe when I started writing for The Daily Beast, and all the fashion people that I admired were reposting the article and sending it to their friends. I thought okay, my words do have some kind of resonance. I'm saying something that I guess nobody else is saying. Maybe because I don't have any skin in the game and I don't have anything to lose.
I think maybe when I started fully directing Kerby shows was when I really felt seen in the fashion industry. Not seen as in, I had to be out front—I was helping Kerby execute his vision—but I felt like I was in a place where I was using everything I had. And I was in a space where…not to say that no one could do what I was doing, but no one could do it the way that I was doing it. That's where my psychology, my theater, my blackness, my queerness, my fashion, photography, musicality, casting, it all came together.
So what do you want to leave behind? You're still young, you still have a lot of time to think about legacy, but have you thought about that?
When I was younger, I thought I just wanted to have a kid. I thought that that would be the best thing that I could leave behind; another responsible, worldly human being. And now, I think... I mean, in a way, I'm kind of cynical, and I'm like, well, I'll just be dead, girl. So it really won't matter much to me. Interestingly enough, I don't think about it too much. But I always think about, you know, like, my deathbed. And what things will carry. What things will I think about on my deathbed.
I just don't want there to be a corner of myself that I left untapped. You know, I just want to die exhausted, like, used up. And knowing that I can't fight every battle, I can't fight everybody's battle, but there are things that I care about; social justice, being number one. Being a voice for people who don't have the courage to speak, because I think that courage is the one x-factor in human beings; it's the one thing that's really not doled out in equal measure. And it's something that can't—it can maybe be cultivated—but you can't really teach it.
You know, you can get a lot of money, you can get a great job, you can get a great husband or a great wife, and have a wonderful house. These are things that you could get and work towards. But courage is one of those things that just is not doled out in equal measure. That's how two siblings from the same household can live two completely different lives. And it's because more often than not, one was more courageous than the other. I always go back to Maya Angelou when she says that of all the virtues, courage is the most important because without it, you can't practice any of the others consistently. And so for me, you know, I just want the courage to put my ideas into action.
Does it matter what's left behind knowing everything is temporary?
There are people who have had amazing lives and amazing careers and have been on the top of their game and no one knows who they are. Perfect, perfect example is Pearl Bailey. First black woman to have her own variety show. Was at the top of her game. TOP of her game. Nobody talks about Pearl Bailey. At all.
What do you turn to for advice?
My parents. And as I've gotten older, I've started to try to build my own kind of personal board of directors that I reach out to for advice on the things they specialize in. People who are living lives or a version of a life that I want to live at some point. And Black women. Always, literally always. And that's something that I value more and more and more as time goes on.
What does feeling seen mean to you? Or seeing someone.What does that mean? Seen?
I think it means simply to be understood.
And I base that on that first trip I took to South Africa where I realized, as African American, I hadn't been seen my whole life until I went there. I'm sitting at this bar slash carwash slash barber shop in Johannesburg and I'm sitting there with these two women. And they're like, "[Curiously], I don't know, I think your people might be from ‘Swana... like your skin tone but also your temperament...like you're not an aggressive warrior-type, like Zulu or Maasai"... and realizing that everything about me came from somewhere. That I had not been seen up until that point.
And, you know, it was crazy for me to think about how many black Americans are living in the US as literally some of the most beautiful, the most beautiful, magical things on the planet. And they have no idea because nobody sees them. Nobody can see them. Not even themselves because they don't know where they came from. And to know that everything about you has a reason. Everything about you comes from somewhere.
And they're living in a world where beauty looks a certain way. Success looks a certain way. And if you don't fit that, then you're not beautiful, or you're not successful. And you realize like, there's so many things about you that are beautiful. Beauty is not one thing. It's 20 things, it's 50 things. But if you don't know, you don't know, because you're judging yourself up against a standard that you didn't even choose. Me growing up with self esteem issues, and not realizing the source of them, not realizing why none of the white boys I liked, liked me back. Oh, well, I must be ugly. Not knowing that that's not the case. It was something else that I didn't understand at the time. And so to go somewhere and really be seen, is amazing.
I think I'm pretty straightforward. Maybe not simple, but like, pretty straightforward. And there are so many people who don’t see me.
A lot of exes didn’t see me because they’re coming from a place of lack. So many of us are, to be honest. Myself included. So they needed me to be this thing and to fit into this mold and so they never really saw me. So there was an incongruity there. It's very rare to be seen.
I can maybe think of two or three people who can see me: my mother. I think my father has learned to see me. Lucia [Hierro], interestingly enough, can see me. Andre Leon Talley finally saw me once I showed him some of my work. Some of my early fashion work when I was in grad school, and for some reason when he saw that, it clicked. And we have had a bond, you know, since then.
Even then I realized I hadn't even been seen, photographically. Why? Because many of the people who've seen my work did not look like me, did not come from where I came from. As a young person, that validation meant something. And it was crazy because I did… ok, short story. I was in grad school and my teacher was Ivan Shaw, who was the photo director at Vogue, and he gave us an assignment to create a six page fashion story on our favorite piece of literature, it could also be a poem or music. So mine is Great Expectations. Me being the fucking overachiever that I am, I turned in a 26-page story. I found an abandoned mansion like I mean, I went in. For a damn school assignment.
Anyway, I go to class and I just know I'm killing it. I'm like, psh, I slayed this. And Ivan's [flippantly] like, "Oh...that's nice."
I was like, WHAT? And that shit is like mad discouraging, like really discouraging when you know that you slayed it but the person who's judging or proceeding to judge, not only can't see you, but maybe, just maybe sees you and can't let you have it. I mean, maybe you didn’t like it, and that’s cool. But how about a word of encouragement, or “I see what you were trying to do here, but maybe try this.” Many of my friends of color say the same about their art crits. Funny, but that’s the same work I showed Andre [Leon Talley] eight years later and he went nuts over it.
But that happens for black and brown people. I don't feel a certain way about it, but I'm aware of it. And that's really the thing. I have no emotional attachment or any story that I've told myself around it, but just being aware of the way in which the world works. James Baldwin says the only way to navigate the world is to know the worst things about it.
You have to just trust the work that you're doing is good work. And maybe somebody sees. I just have to answer to myself, did I work that I’m proud of and that was good enough.
That's all we can do.
Was that the best I could do? Can I do better? Can I top my last thing? That's the only real measure we have. We’re only in competition with ourselves.
Any final words?
Stay curious and keep showing up.