.: Tenacity and Vision

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Tenacity and Vision

1992 was 20 years ago… It was the year Curtis Lipscomb moved back to Detroit after spending time in NYC working in the fashion industry. It as also the year he became part of Men of Color, an up and coming motivational group that met every Tuesday in the basement of a Woodward Avenue Episcopal church. The group represented Black gay men and their supporters and on any given Tuesday you might find 30 - 60 members congregated around a topic of discussion. More often than not there might be a motivational speaker brought in to tell their story. Every meeting ended with you feeling better than when you had walked in and was often followed by a dinner somewhere in the city. It was a special time for many of us. We were meeting in a place other than a bar and suddenly these individuals came alive as individuals vs. club kids… Between 1993 and 1995 the group grew into a bigger organization ultimately developing offices, and an HIV outreach program funded by a Ryan White Act Grant of considerable value. MOC had become a 501c3 non-profit with a board of directors and Curtis and I became part of a team responsible for getting the word out… A newsletter and events became part of our responsibility. At the zenith of the groups existence we helped to role out the first program ever targeted to an inner city gay audience in Detroit's history called "In The Circle". Shortly there after the motivational group collapsed under the new and immense responsibilities and egos gone array leaving only the HIV outreach group to finish out their responsibilities to the grant. Looking back it was a stunning implosion.

Curtis and I worked diligently to start a magazine to fill the hole that had been left in our lives… it was called Kick. Over the years Kick has grown into another organization, which has largely replaced the original MOC with Curtis at the helm. I had by then moved on to a new job in Toronto. Today Kick is an organization that is out on the front lines, getting out a message of safe sex, and fighting for human rights in a city enduring tough times! Back in the MOC days it was a big deal to get support from a City Council Member or even a meeting with the Mayor. Curtis has moved Kick into a new orbit with his work and mission as recognized by a recent trip to the White House and Meeting the President.

The story I have encapsulated is much larger and epic in scope but when I looked at these photos I couldn't help but think back to those early MOC days… Couldn't help but think of all the things the group wanted to accomplish then. I walk away with the thought that while the road may have been convoluted and long, the mission for Curtis and many others never waivered from its original goals. Curtis's tenacity and vision being recognized at such a national level says it all.

I'm so proud to see Curtis recognized for his work and efforts… Yet still only the beginning of a bigger and more epic story still being told in Detroit!

Jonathan Carthart of the Washington Post, Jan & Sue, publishers of Between The Lines Newspaper and Curtis Lipscomb from Kick!

Here is an article related to the White House Visit

Note: All images and text (not specified) is copyrighted by Christopher Cushman. This site does not specify or denote the sexual orientation of any model and as such please post your comments accordingly.

No comments:

The Dance Through Life Project

Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

Order your copy today by clicking on the books above!

Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

FIERCE! Being Black, Being Gay in America

"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

The importance of Fierce is paramount: all men are created equal, and share a space on earth. These portraits of men have to be recognized as God’s beauty and not His damnation. Time will thank those who were strong and dared enough to express themselves for all to see and appreciate in a manner that’s loving and creative. Time will also thank us for not living in a paranoid state of mind, and afraid of our own shadows. Remember, this cluster of work isn’t Robert Mappelthope’s approach to black imagery, but the approach of documenting men as they wanted to be seen: with and without sexual stimulation, for shock value."

Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com