Clifford Prince King.
Last week, I went with my friends to this Black American Portraits exhibit at Spelman, and I don’t know why I don’t look for things like this more often. I’ve mostly seen Black visual art amidst other art, as a sort of surprise. I saw Kehinde Wiley’s work, suddenly, as I turned the corner in the High Art Museum. I came across Arthur Jafa’s “LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH” in an art museum in Denver, sat there and watched it at least three times. Black visual art has mostly been something I’ve had to stumble upon, so to be surrounded by it naturally made me feel buzzy.
I have blurry photos of almost the whole exhibit on my phone because I’ve learned about Black visual art in school these last two years, but peripherally, mostly focusing on literature and film. It was cool then to see the work that my professors have told me about. There is Kerry James Marshall. There is Jacob Lawrence. There’s a photograph of James Baldwin, Basquiat. I felt like running around this exhibit, looking at everything over and over until it was collected, completely, inside of me. I felt like if I could just keep it inside of me, I’d be, myself, a better artist.
When I saw Clifford Prince King’s “Safe Space,” my insides went quiet a little. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I was still buzzy but somehow also felt very calm now. I didn’t want to look away, in part because what they were doing in this photo is maybe what we all want to do. Sit with people like us, be close to the ones who know us, be loved exactly how we want to be loved by people who know how to love us. We want to not be on the run, not fleeing or retreating deep into ourselves, but here, where we are safe. Here are three Black men—queer men—reading and braiding each other’s hair and smoking and lounging, and you want to be with them and you also want to leave them alone, let them have their safe space without your interruption.
When I looked into Clifford Prince King and his work, I found that the privacy I felt from the men in that photo—even as they stood there on display—was intentional. I read this really great profile on King in The New Yorker (the link’s below) where the writer, Doreen St. Felix, said, “The photographer is not simply interested in making Black gay men available to be ‘seen.’ He is intent on showing his audience that there is value in ambiguity, in privacy.” They are there, but they’re not there to teach you something, to include you, to make you feel better about yourself. They are not even looking at you, and this, perhaps, is part of what makes their space feel safe.
Studying literature and writing fiction as a Black person, I’ve struggled with the impulse by some White audience members to consume minority art in order to become a better person, to be taught something. I think it irks me because it is, in a sense, asking minorities to continue serving Whiteness, to—even as an artist—tell them something they want to hear, consider them in your art. They want to be made aware, to have conversations with you about their ignorance, to feel bad and then good again, to learn how to be better people. It is not the job of the minority in any sense to help you atone for your sins. It is also not the job of the minority to bring you in, to say, Come, watch us, join us, talk to us. We forgive you. We forgive you. We forgive you.
I like how the men in “Safe Space” look away. How they are not there to serve you. I came across another piece in that New Yorker article— “Our Last Blunt Together”—and it made me emotional to look at it. There, the subject looks right at the camera, but still, it’s clear, he’s not looking at you. He is looking at presumably King, who is looking at him, holding a blunt to his lips. Even as you look right at this man, even in his vulnerability, in his eyes that are arguably a little teary themselves, there is privacy, a resistance to being consumed by anyone other than the man there with him in that moment.
I love that privacy. I love that impulse to show and then not show, to choose what those looking from afar can see, to have some control over the extent of what you reveal. It’s not totally the same but I’m reading a lot of slave narratives right now, and they do something similar. Tell you what they want to tell you and tell you even what they’re not telling you. I’m not going to tell you how I got away, they say, but just so you know, I’m free.
Image: Clifford Prince King
Really great New Yorker article with more photos: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-lovers-of-clifford-prince-king.
