Joshua Rashaad McFadden and Lyle Ashton Harris sit down in New York City to discuss the work of McFadden, his timely portraiture series Come to Selfhood, and the experiences that inspired the work.
LAH: So tell me Joshua, the origin of this project.
JRM: Well, I really began considering the topic of identity around 2012. I was 22 years old at the time. It was the year Trayvon Martin was killed and there was uprising across the country, particularly from the Black community. This single moment became the harsh reminder of how Black men are viewed in this society, and the beginning of a string of unjustified killings that shook Millennials like myself to the reality of racism and racial profiling.
LAH: The devastating shot reverberated through many of us. Do you remember the moment you first heard about it and where the news came from? Can you recall your initial feelings and reactions in the immediate wake of this tragedy?
JRM: I didn’t watch much TV at the time. However, it was through social media status updates and videos that I learned of the murder. It was just so shocking to me: the loss of Trayvon’s young life, him being a perceived threat without cause, the outcry, and later Zimmerman’s sentencing. I could not understand it, that is, until I realized that, with Trayvon Martin, it was this idea of the black hoodie, what he was wearing. The fact that he had brown skin and wore a black hoodie made him “intimidating and suspicious†to Zimmerman. I began to think about perceptions of Black boys, Black innocence, youth and my peers; about how we, as a community, have to take greater precautions than others.
LAH: One of the first things I was struck by with this book were the portraits that you have taken, but also the archival aspect of the project in terms of the images that your subjects have selected of their fathers. I really love the juxtaposition between the more formal portrait and the vernacular image.
JRM: Yes, the images speak to the variety of the everyday man, whether it is a graduation photograph, a military photograph, or an image in the home. It is very important for the images to be visible and for the full spectrum of the Black man to be represented.
LAH: This juxtaposition gets echoed throughout the book. You have curated an archive of these types of men who are underscoring and laying the groundwork for an archive of not just one voice, but a multiplicity of voices of men who speak to the power of legacy, lineage, and the transmission of knowledge and trauma. It is also counter-cultural in the sense that it challenges stereotypes from outside the community, as well as from within.
JRM: By delving into these ideas of history, role models, varied experiences and how the elements shape the Black male identity, the previously invisible Black man is now accurately and meaningfully visible.