Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1024601
Naima Green Naima Green is not afraid to give her subjects power. "The photographer has so much control over their image making process," Green says, "but a lot of the work I made last year was about submission." In this spirit, last spring the Brooklyn-based artist, writer and educator sent an email to a list of friends, lovers and loose acquaintances with the following vague invitation: "I'd like to take a portrait with you," it read. "You will have the opportunity to direct me through a brief experience." For the subjects that consented, the appropriately titled Attraction Experiment became an experiential portrait series taken in one of the last old-school photo booths in Brooklyn. In the grainy, black-and-white film strips, the photographer executed instructions provided by her collaborators. Some requests were as simple as asking Green to exhale as the camera snapped, while other demands were more complex. One sitter asked the photographer to participate in a Meisner technique activity—an intimacy-building, observation-based acting exercise—with her in the booth. In the portrait series, Green appears beside her many-gendered subjects in various states of play, surrender and—yes—palpable mutual attraction. Green's portraits often cultivate community, queer and otherwise. Attraction Experiment exists alongside longer-term projects like Jewels from the Hinterland (2013–present), in which Green responds to the limited representation of people of color in urban green spaces, utilizing spaces like Brooklyn's Prospect Park to frame and foster an expansive community of black artists. Located somewhere between Attraction Experiment and Jewels is the recent portrait Untitled (Riis), which reveals emergent concepts that the artist plans to further develop. This beach scene depicts the forged community that Green's practice celebrates, but also hones in on her nascent interest in visualizing and making space for femme- identified queer women. BOTH IMAGES: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. Green's Untitled (Riis), 2017, visualizes a community of queer femmes of color. 168 culturedmag.com