Essay and Q&A ‘Familiar Stranger’

“Shifting Photography’s Grounds” by Leigh Raiford

Embedded in every photograph is the trace of its failure, the impossibility of the task of “faithful” and “true” representation which we have assigned to the medium, and on which we insist despite knowing better. No matter the photograph’s technical perfection, its careful framing, the beauty of its protagonist, the care taken in the darkroom or editing software, photographs are often not enough or too much. This is especially true of Black people’s engagements with photography. And since the inception of the medium circa the 1830s, the photograph more often than not has been a site of violence or an aspirational attempt to counter the violence of capture, imprisonment, repetition, fixity. Inevitably photography fails.

Q/A between Essence Harden and Erica Deeman,
August 2020

Essence: Can you bring us along to the beginnings of this series? How did space (both physical and mental) and access (to time and technology) at the Headlands residency guide this process? Erica: The initial thinking began, as always, with a series of questions, the most important centered on what more could a photograph be? Within its fixed state and presentation, could I add dimension? In adding dimension could it transcend between literal and abstracted visions of the portrait? I sat in my studio in San Francisco and thought for a long time about this journey and what I had access to in terms of resources. I craved the fluidity of working with other mediums, so I learned how to use the kiln and gained access to a 3D printer in the studio complex.