thegang:

I am extremely excited to present a GAQ feature interview and photo spread with incredible photographer and artist, Sophia Wallace. Wallace merges narrative, documentary, fashion, and performance strategies to create dialogue around notions of gender and identity.  And it’s beautiful work. Perhaps the most striking thing about Wallace’s work for me is her ability to create imagery as crisp and fashion-forward as those in your latest issue of Vogue, while simultaneously offering cultural commentary and bringing thought provoking themes to the fore.  

I asked Wallace some questions about her work, her process and the ideas behind it all. Click the photo for the entire spread, or click HERE to download. 

Invisibility may be defined as the ability or will of the power group not to acknowledge the presence or influence of another group. Being invisible as a black person runs the gamut from the daily experience of entering a room full of white people and not being acknowledged to the other extreme of erasure from history. Where would Mick Jagger or David Bowie be without Little Richard? (Or even James Brown or Michael Jackson for that matter?) Silence may be defined as the act of subordinating the expression of one’s needs to the will of the group in power. Sometimes the silence is strategic, as was Walter White’s. Many times, it is a suppression of one’s beliefs to accommodate what one has been told is the “greater good,” the ‘this’-now-and-‘that’-later philosophy. Many gay and lesbian people succumb to the oppression-ranking syndrome in groups whose politics are not anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, or anti-hierarchical. We spend our lives, as gay and lesbian people, calculating the costs of silence.

Spilling Whitney’s Tea Redux ›

Brandon White, who was recently gay bashed in Atlanta, speaks out.

Anyone with information should call 404-577-8477.

Crime Stoppers

Being in the academy has enabled me to do my work for the most part, because I have never taken my place within the academy too seriously….

And believe me, I have had some setbacks there. Between 1998 and 2002 I worked for a very homophobic vice president and worked under the leadership of a very homophobic and conservative university president for 12 years. This was not fun. We had to deal with Republicans in Washington during the 1980s; and, at Rutgers, since everything comes to the academy later, we had to deal with Republicans at Rutgers in the 1990s. This was very impactful. During this whole time I, of course, continued to write, continued to study, and published my critical study of the Black Arts Movement, “After Mecca,” and my collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005. I received my doctorate in 2000, which made me very happy. I worked for it from 1991 to 2000 in the English Department at Rutgers, but actually, I started in 1969 and stopped in 1974. Those nine years of study during the 90s were some of my happiest times. So, really it took me 15 years to finish, but I like to say 30 years.

anegroking:

“Our Families: LGBT African American Stories”.

(via theblacksophisticate)

[currently watching:]

…I could never have sex in a darkroom. It was bad enough being in clubs in New York and not being able to see anyone’s face it was so dark. I want to get away from the idea of gay sexuality being something that is dark and only happens at night.