Insight
Chester Higgins Jr.: Insights from 40 Years As an Artist by Kim Milo, New York University journalism student March 2007
A
s a non-native of New York, any respite from the bitter hustle of Manhattan streets is a welcome relief. At the moment I crossed the threshold of Photographer Chester Higgins’s Brooklyn brownstone, I was instantly put at ease by the warmth of his home and by his graciously welcoming embrace. In addition to completing 6 books of his photography, Higgins has worked as a staff photographer for the New York Times since 1975, and his work has appeared in magazines such as Newsweek, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fortune, Art News, Essence and Archeology. Most recently, one of Higgins’s original photos provided the basis for the three-story photo mosaic at the new Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. A product of the village of New Brockton Alabama, Chester Higgins Jr., and most of his personal work revolve around the lives and times of people of color. His photography at first explored the experiences of African Americans, and later grew to investigate peoples of Africa and other locations abroad. On a mellow Saturday afternoon, Chester and I sat with mugs of coffee in his book-lined living room where he shared with me his beginnings, his philosophies, and some of the best advice he’s picked up during his 40 years as a photographer. As I inquired about his life and work with the thirsty ears of a devoted pupil, in a soft yet gravelly voice the seasoned artist responded with the sincerity of a dedicated mentor.
Q: What first inspired you to become a photographer? A: Seeing some old photographs by P.H. Polk, from the thirties of people who were poor farmers but had an incredible sense of dignity about them. It made me realize that the people who I love the most in my life, my great aunt and my great uncle, I had never seen photographs of them. And also I realized that as a student I didn’t have the money to ask a professional photographer to make these pictures. So instead I asked this photographer if he would teach me how to use the camera. I started saving my money and in about 6 months later I bought my first camera. Q: So how did your initial desire to document your great aunt and uncle evolve into what you are doing now? A: My desire out of the heart to create images of love of my great uncles and aunts first just evolved in showing heart-felt pictures of other people, who were my in my neighborhood, who were in my college, or who were in my county. Eventually it became politicized. Q: How did your photos first become political or take on social significance? A: Everybody has their political awakenings as they grow up and each generation has it for different reasons. My generation in the 60’s had ours because we had problems with southern Dixiecrats. We held demonstrations at the governor’s state house and I noticed the next day in the newspaper that when we were depicted in the media, not as American citizens petitioning the government, but rather as potential arsonists and thugs and rapists. It made me realize that I had a choice. I could scream racism or I could assume that the people who made these pictures were incapable of seeing it any other way. I said OK, I will go make my own pictures and see if I can convince editors to use these pictures, not instead but in addition to the others. Q: What are you attempting to do through your art? What are the messages you are trying to send? A: When my heart images became hitched to a wagon of political and societal necessity, I began to say that what I wanted to do was document the life and times of people of color seen through how I was seeing it, which I thought would be a more realistic rendering than how we were being seen by others. That’s what I decided I wanted to do in 1968 and that’s essentially what I’m still doing. Q: Do you consider yourself an insider trying to tell the rest of the world what this experience is like or are you yourself attempting to learn about it through your work?
A: I’m trying to do both. Because in order for me to make sure that the material itself is full and rich and valuable, I constantly learning. As an image-maker, the more you know the more you can effectively translate it into a two-dimensional statement. So I research. I try to make my photographs visually compelling, try to keep them simple. If you deconstruct my images, you’ll be able to see many levels of information that I’ve been able to pack into an image. Content is very important thing to me. So on the one hand I’d done the homework to infuse the image with a certain quality of information, while at the same time being an advocate for the message by marketing the work so that others can appreciate what I’ve been able to render. Q: When you photograph people you don’t know, how do you gain their trust to get an inside perspective? A: I try to set up a formula of, here is a person who I could like as a friend who happens to have a camera, but the camera is the last thing that I’m concerned about. My photographs are very personal, reflecting very intimate moments, and you can’t really do that without the cooperation of the subject matter. I want to insinuate myself within first, and once I’m within then I can look around but if I come first from outside trying to look with the camera, then all kind of red flags of paranoia begin to rise. The first thing people sense is your assumptions about them. I tend to approach them with charitable assumptions. You must not be judgmental and you must be willing to be accepting of them. No matter what conditions people find themselves to be, they are still human, they are someone’s children. With this approach I avoid sacrificing their humanity on the altars of their condition. Their difference, to me, is a starting point, not an end. Q: If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring photographer, what would it be? A: Travel. You have to get out and see the rest of the world, because it broadens you, it changes you. People around the world are quite interesting to see how people around the world solve simple everyday problems, sometimes differently than us. It opens your heart. And I think that it becomes a cerebral high. It’s something that you can’t get by staying home. Get out there and find it, go out there and experience it.
Chester Higgins Jr.’s many beautiful and evocative portraits can be viewed at his website; www.chesterhiggins.com