To Box or Not to Box, the Everyday Thoughts from a Black Photographer

By Hanna Wondmagegn

Photo by Alex Barrett (@alex._.visuals).

This morning, I was going through my morning Twitter scroll routine to see what the Twittersphere was mad about today when I came across an Aperture article titled, “How Photographers Navigate the Challenges of Working on Assignment.” 

The beautiful piece written by Aaron Schuman features four photographers, Natalie Keyssar, Poulomi Basu, Quil Lemons, and Ashish Shah. I was reading along, nodding my head in agreement with what every person said when I came across a quote from Lemons: 

“I always think that it’s interesting that, when I get pitched stories, a lot of them are Black…At this point in my career, I find myself not really wanting to have any labels put onto anything that I do. I think that you should just feel that art and it shouldn’t matter. And we all wish we didn’t have to be talking about our Blackness all the time. But in being a Black photographer, the fact is that my Blackness often comes before my photography, which is so annoying and can also be very limiting.” 

Phew. The way this launched a crisis immediately. I quickly scrolled through my Instagram feed (where I am horrible at posting my work) and looked at every photo I took for an assignment I was directly reached out to. And every single one, from January to December of 2021, were either about Black people or stories related to Blackness. And that has me feeling some type of way. 

On the one hand, I am a Black women photographer, specifically an Ethiopian-U.S. American visual storyteller if we want to get technical. I’ve called on publications and organizations to hire more Black photographers, I’m a part of Black Women Photographers (BWP) - an organization that supports and uplifts Black Women Photographers - and I bring up the names of Black storytellers in every room I can and more. All that to say, I am always working on getting our voices included. 

On the other hand, I get frustrated when I only get sought out because I am a Black photographer and not because of my skill, experience, and work. I look at the work I’ve done for places and wonder if it’s just because of the intersection of my identities that I got chosen for and not because I can do the job well. I walk into a room and wonder who is thinking I only got here to be the token and not because of who I am as a person and creative. I don’t dwell on this last part a lot, it’s often a fleeting thought immediately followed by, ‘well, if I’m being used ima use them right back’ (a lingering motto and philosophy of my time in college). 

But when I sit down and look back, I can’t help feeling like a token, my name being brought up in rooms only when the story is about Black people or Blackness. 

And I get hesitant about writing that sentence out (and this entire blog post) because, on the one hand, it’s what I have called this industry out on: the significant lack of publications giving storytellers the platform to tell stories of their communities (aka, letting white photographers do all the storytelling). Note that I emphasized the lack of publications giving storytellers the platform and not the absence of storytellers of color and Black storytellers as we have always existed and told our stories. It was the publications that didn’t give us the space to. 

I worry someone out there will read that, throw their hands up in the air and say, “well, what more do they want? First they (in my mind, this type of person is saying, “the Blacks” instead of “they”) complain that they need more of their own people telling their story and then when we do that, they complain that they are tired of telling the stories of their communities?” Yes…and no?

I can, of course, only speak for myself, and that’s not what I am trying to say. I’m slightly annoyed at the possibility of only being chosen for Black stories because I am Black. I’ve always been proud of the diverse range of my work related to race and every other pillar of diversity. I’m also proud of the diverse range of my work as it relates to all the types of photography I can do. 

For me, there is a difference between one’s personal work and projects and the assignments they get pitched. In my case, the personal projects I work on are intentionally diversified, and there’s a reason for that. As my about me section of my site says, “My work centers those individuals and communities that are often misrepresented and left behind.” This need comes from my personal experience growing up in a community of people that were misrepresented and left behind. 

Then there are the stories I get pitched, and that is where today’s discomfort lies. 2021 was the year of really branching out onto the freelance world, and I’ve been fortunate to be in a position where I haven’t had to pitch much and instead get reached out to by editors to work on an assignment. I’ve had editors/publications say they liked the type of work that I do and some that said they loved my philosophy with my work.

But then I think of a comment that a *story partner who I was taking a portrait of made during a shoot. They said something along the lines of how they found it interesting that the publication assured them that the photographer (me) was Black. They then brought up that they would have been comfortable with any photographer and found the comment odd. I should add that the story partner for this assignment was also Black.

This comment, along with the quote from the article above, is what prompted today's blog post and makes me wonder how editors and publications use databases like BWP and select photographers for assignments. In the above case, asking the story partner if they have a preference for a photographer may have been more helpful than stating that the photographer was Black in the assumption that it was what they would have wanted. 

I’ve had many story partners tell me they specifically wanted to work with a woman or a Black photographer for their personal comfort. I’ve had clients tell me they wanted to support more diverse artists financially. And it makes me happy to hear that because what I hear is that people feel represented and people are active co-conspirators in diversifying their art and what they consume and support.

But, there’s a difference between the above situation versus checking off a diversity box or assuming that it is what the client/story partner wants or the photographer wants. 

I recognize that this may just be the natural course of diversifying an industry that has long been white, male-dominated. There is the inevitable tokenization and box-checking on the path to true equity and justice in the field and being recognized as a human with a respected and creative voice and work of art. And somewhere in that path from tokenization to realization, there is someone who is surprisingly shocked that somebody they chose to satisfy diversity requirements can do the job and more. 

I posed this conversation to the BWP slack channel and was reminded of the agency I have in declining an assignment and pitching more stories I want to work on. I’m still unpacking what this all means for me moving forward. I want to emphasize that I’m proud of all the work I produced this year and enjoyed all the story partners and editors I worked with. 

As all my blog posts end, there is no true end. This conversation is open-ended and constantly changing. My thoughts typed out today may change by the end of the day or the week or the year. This conversation - like all conversations - are ever-changing, nuanced, and complex. And this needn’t be said but it also must be reminded that my thoughts don’t represent the thoughts of all Black photographers. I worry about hitting post and what people will take away from this. But I can’t control that in the same way that I can’t control how and why my name is mentioned in rooms. I can only continue to live my truth and produce work that makes me proud. 

*I realize I have often referenced “story partner” without defining what that means. To decolonize the language used in this industry, Story Partner refers to the person whose story you are telling. This is a linguistic replacement for the word “subject” which is most commonly used and dehumanizes the person whose story is being told. By using story partner and other collaborative terms as an alternative to “subject,” one can acknowledge the honor of being welcomed into someone’s space, memory and truth and be encouraged to work more collaboratively with your story partner to tell the story in a way that respects them.