Galvanizing Textures

This collection of photographs and poems, inspired by the indelible Robert Hayden poem “Those Winter Sundays,” explores some of the labor and exactitude required to remain caring, truth-seeking, unwavering, and tender in contemporary American society. Injustices persist, and challenges shift and spawn, yet the most marvelous people among us maintain sure-footed poise or invent radiant, new movements within multigenerational dances.

I began this series in 2020, when, among other conditions and events, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted economic and healthcare inequities, and continued violence by police against unarmed BIPOC community members amplified the challenges of communal and personal existence for Black and Brown people. Mass-media cycles and political-narrative swindlers have been relentless in their one-sided portrayals of minorities. It is only through patience and gentleness that we are able to witness our many textures of grief and brilliance. Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices is a collection of street portraits and poetry made in Columbus, Toledo, and New York City. The project depicts the unfolding nuances of under-heralded people’s veracity and beauty.

Even when life in a towering empire reaches another dimension of disillusionment, songs find ways to resound and people embrace and joke, proving that joy is agile and rightfully theirs.

Even when joint-punishing work is mandatory to assure their families stay housed, fed, and clothed, the flooring installers carry materials and tools from the truck to the garish condominium entrance, and their stride bears the enduring geometry of ushering loved ones steadily toward a distant day of feast and rest.

Even after a tiresome week of hearings, reviews, and floor votes in the Statehouse, the person in the tweed blazer and glasses, who looks like almost none of their white-collar colleagues, savors how the winter has completely thawed, and they smoke a vintage pipe while awaiting the southbound bus.

Even at a stoplight on a street where violence and strife have romped and likely will romp again, someone slows their car to a pause, finds a late morning repose with the windows down, and wishes peace to everywhere their energy will reach.

This sample of photographs attests that societal wrongs and strife continue to be diligently resisted by our love, community care, and self-expression.