FORM Vol. XXV

FORM A Space for Ideas, Culture, and Aesthetics

Editor’s Letter Around the world, at Duke University, and at FORM Magazine, the past year was one like no other. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice efforts, and political unrest, FORM provided a source of solace, a medium for reflection, and a space to engage in important discourse.

The celebratory theme for our twenty-fifth volume is memory. In many ways, memory is individual—it is rooted in personal experience and identity. The feelings that we associate with our memories distinguish them from fact.

It is impossible, then, for us to fully share our memories with others. But memories can also be collective. Even in this period of transition and uncertainty, we are all creating memories that may ground us and our communities in the future. Throughout Volume XXV, we consider memory from various angles: the individual and the communal, the past and the present, the remembered and the forgotten.

As FORM engaged with the idea of memory within our sections, we also sought to explore our own past, lost in the short-lived memory of a college campus. Between sections, we chronicle FORM’s own history through the stories of past Editors-in-Chief, unraveling our origins and transformations. While the full oral history can be found online at dukeform.co, our section dividers provide snippets of those histories and people whose presence has shaped our team and the magazine you hold before you.

Our Art & Design section opens with an interview with photographer Andre D. Wagner, entitled Ebb & Flow. Wagner speaks on adding the Black experience to the history of photography, as well as balancing work and self care during the concurrent pandemic and racial justice movement.

Next, we speak to designer and illustrator Aaron Lowell Denton in Opus. Denton’s lucid art channels the sensory and aesthetic aura of art and music from decades past.

From there, nóstos—the Ancient Greek word meaning “returning home”—highlights the lyrical photography of Art & Design Co-Director Sofia Zymnis. Her ethereal cyanotypes of open waters and summer air deepen our shared longing for a freer world. Finally, our conversation with artist Jeffrey Gibson, Outside/Inside, paints the portrait of a man who authors his own stories and creates space for others to do the same.

We begin our Style section with Betwixt, an exploration of liminal space through the passage of time. In harmony with each other and the nature around them, our models are wrapped in the gentle but fleeting embrace of the blue hour sky. We then interview fashion designer and curator Duro Olowu. Titled Like Sculpture, the conversation details how Olowu’s recollections of a cosmopolitan childhood inform his creative process. Next, Warped dips into the murky depths of malleable memories. Our models find themselves in touch with their surroundings, yet profoundly out of place. We conclude the section with Lift Off, a talk with the trailblazing creative director and founder of Lagos Space Programme, Adeju Thompson. At once cherishing and challenging the traditions of their native Nigeria, Thompson is joining the conversations that echo through their designs.

In our Travel & Culture section, we sit down with ceramicist Stephanie Shih. The Grocery Store is stocked with Shih’s thoughts on capturing the collective nostalgia of the Asian-American diaspora and fighting for a more equitable society. 27708 then zooms in on the Duke community, documenting the freshman experience in a thoroughly abnormal year. We stay in Durham to speak with Ricky Moore, the chef and owner of Saltbox Seafood Joint. Chef Ricky sees our local culinary hero reminisce on a fruitful career and look forward to an equally promising future.

Our swan song, Standing, Still, is a rumination on the imperfect delights of childhood and the preservative power of photography.

We hope Vol. XXV can be an ebenezer for your memories of this season, as it has been ours.

Sincerely, Stephanie Cutler & Dani Yan

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Stephanie Cutler Dani Yan

CREATIVE DIRECTORS

Savannah Norman Alex Raghunandan

LAYOUT DIRECTOR

Layne Vanatta

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Skyler Graham

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Jackson Muraika

DIRECTORS OF ART & DESIGN

Sawyer Uzzell Sofia Zymnis

DIRECTORS OF STYLE

Ali Rothberg Ellie Rothstein

DIRECTORS OF TRAVEL & CULTURE

Becca Schneid Mindy Wu

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS DIGITAL DIRECTOR ART & DESIGN CONTRIBUTORS Advaitha Anne Bella Bann Whitney Elson Willa Gilbert-Goldstein Anna Greenleaf Sebin Jeon Clara Lyra Charlotte McEvoy Raina Menin Zoe Murphy Caroline Rettig Abby Shlesinger Evelyn Shi Alice Xu STYLE CONTRIBUTORS Daniel Block Rebecca Boss Ben Chipman Sita Conde Quinn Davis Mare Kozmar Audrey Liu Lauren May Sydney Reede Elena Rivera Kira Upin Erika Wang Katie Zhou

Alyssa Shin Katherine Xiao TRAVEL & CULTURE CONTRIBUTORS Malaika Bhayana Arabella Chen Darielle Engilman Emily Gonzales Emma Shokeir Michelle Liang Aryan Poonacha Madeleine Reinhard Georgie Stammer EDITORAL CONTRIBUTORS Stephen Atkinson Skylar Bloom Avery Didden Samantha Littenberg COMMUNICATIONS Ginger del Real Claire Ryland Kira Upin Chloe Ward LAYOUT CONTRIBUTORS Sana Hairadin Leslie Kang Juanita Mackey Ginny Naughton

Table of Contents ART & DESIGN Ebb & Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Opus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Nóstos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Outside/Inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 A Love Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

STYLE Betwixt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Like Sculpture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Warped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Lift Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

TRAVEL & CULTURE The Grocery Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 27708 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Chef Ricky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Standing, Still . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

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The Inception At Duke in 2009, there were student-run literary magazines, but they were either heavily focused on poetry, writing, and journalism, or they were strictly fine art representation. There was nothing that sat in the middle of that, and celebrated anything with fashion, culture, or local community. My co-founder Mona and I, we were obsessed with fashion and wanted to find our own personal outlet for it.

We got a team together that would focus on each of those areas for the magazine — fashion trends, long-form features, photoshoots, and the piece on the local Durham community.

And over time, we evolved the leadership structure. We learned a lot of lessons and made a lot of mistakes, as far as thinking we needed a person to do X and we actually needed to do Y, or we had too many people doing Y, but needed people to do X and Z. That was certainly a learning curve of what makes the magazine run smoothly and function properly to create the best product and maximize reach and exposure.

The mission was to create a space for culturally and fashionfocused students to express themselves. That was where we started, and then it became more about getting out into the community and making it more of a lifestyle publication. At the time, the magazines were only 60 pages, shorter than yours now. We had a much tighter focus on mostly seasonal fashion.

When we started, FORM was a fun passion project and when I look back at old issues, I'm like, “Oh gosh, we really shouldn't have chosen that picture,” or, “I wish we'd done these things differently,” but in the moment, we were just trying to have fun and create a product that we were proud of. And we were really proud of it.

But it's really cool that over time, different editors have refined it further and put their own personal stamp on it.

- Caroline Long '12

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Andre D. Wagner is a photographer based in Brooklyn. He moved to New York after growing up in Omaha, Nebraska and earning a degree in social work from Buena Vista University, where he was a star on the basketball team. He considered playing basketball professionally and pursued a Master of Social Work at Fordham University before settling into a career as a photographer. Most of Wagner’s work documents the daily life of people in his neighborhood, but he has also traveled across the country as a photojournalist for publications like the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vogue. In 2019, he worked on a movie set for the first time, capturing key images for “Queen & Slim.” FORM talked to Wagner about working during the pandemic, the movement for racial justice in America, and his new book.

working, but my approach has been completely different.

DY: You’ve said that “the best things about photography are found in the process of making the work.” What have you learned from your process?

AW: I study a lot of photography. I love photo books, looking at pictures, studying people’s images, reading about photography, and listening to talks and lectures. But nothing has given me more knowledge and insight than actually being out in the world with my tool. Nothing can replace that experience of moving your body, looking at people and carrying yourself. Nothing can replace that understanding of light, seeing what light does when it bounces off a window or what something looks like when it’s backlit. Nothing can replace a shared moment between two people. I think about walking down the street and seeing a group of Black guys and one of them giving me a head nod. Nothing can replace that cultural interaction or that heightened sense of being in a place.

Dani Yan: You’re a self-described people person: People are almost always the subjects of your photographs, and getting physically close to people is central to your practice. How has being away from people during lockdown impacted your work?

A photograph can move you and teach you. I’m constantly trying to learn from other people’s work. But nothing’s better than actually being out there and doing it. That’s how you have revelations, put to practice your understanding, and get to new places. It’s getting lost in the process of making photographs instead of being in a controlled frame of mind all the time. I’ve always put a lot of weight on really being about it and not just talking about it.

Andre D. Wagner: It’s been huge, and I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate it. And it’s changed as the months went by. In March, I was down in Selma photographing the Bloody Sunday anniversary. My wife was in Italy, where everything was going crazy. So we made it back and she had to self-quarantine, and we just started this whole ride.

At first, I was still working and roaming around with my mask. It wasn’t that bad at first and everyone wasn’t wearing a mask. But as time went on, it just got worse and worse, especially here in New York being in the epicenter of it.

"NOTHING CAN REPLACE A SHARED MOMENT BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE. I THINK ABOUT WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND SEEING A GROUP OF BLACK GUYS AND ONE OF THEM GIVING ME A HEAD NOD. NOTHING CAN REPLACE THAT CULTURAL INTERACTION OR THAT HEIGHTENED SENSE OF BEING IN A PLACE.

So it’s been tough, but I have taken a few assignments. I did an assignment for Time where I was in Manhattan and doing a story on how COVID affects cab drivers. I was putting myself in a lot of compromising positions being in and out of cabs all day, riding the subway and riding buses.

Outside of doing the assignments, it’s been incredibly difficult to wrap my head around everything and figure out how to make my own photographs at this time. But I didn’t immediately take a step back and see what was happening, I just stayed at it and kept going. That’s been a learning process for me, and it's also shaped the work I’ve been making over the past few months. It’s really been a whirlwind. I went from putting myself in compromising situations and still trying to make photographs to where I am now, which is way scaled back and hardly doing what I usually do.

DY: I was really struck by a passage you recently wrote for the New York Times about wanting to document recent protests against police brutality. You wrote: “I had nothing left; I was so weak, the camera was just too heavy.” Have you ever felt like that before?

AW: No, I haven’t. I think I’ve had to take a step back and prioritize my own well-being and my own mental health. There’s a lot of energy that goes onto my work, constantly meeting new people and engaging with folks and trying to match their energy. And photographing is a very physical process. The way I've been feeling lately, maybe it’s just what happens when you work so hard.

For the past two months, I’ve been waking up at 4 a.m. and going outside at 5 a.m. to start my day, when the sun is rising and there’s hardly anyone outside. I’ve been making photographs in that two-hour window in the morning. I’m the type of person that makes pictures every day, whether I’m taking a couple pictures or shooting all day. For me, touching my tool sharpens my mind and my eye and keeps me comfortable. I like to make pictures every day, so I knew I wasn’t going to completely stop

At this time, I think everybody’s trying to find out what this

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can be a part of that. Or maybe I can at least show other people that look like me that photography is a worthwhile pursuit.

DY: The photo from that post is one of my favorite shots of yours, the other being from “Here for the Ride,'' of a smiling stanger tying another Black woman’s durag on the subway.

Both photos stirred up some really strong feelings in me, but in almost entirely opposite ways. I’ve honestly never been moved by photographs the way that I have been by yours. And actually right after I wrote most of my questions for this interview, I saw your Tweet: “your own work ever make you cry?” I can definitely answer this from my perspective, but I want to hear from you — what is it about your photos that causes such a strong emotional response?

time means to them and how to come out of it as a changed person. Obviously the world has changed, but I think we are also shifting and changing as individuals. I think that’s what I’ve been going through myself. I appreciate this path that I’m on since getting here and working and becoming an artist, but also trying to listen to myself when I need to have some different priorities. I’ve been able to take a step back and write and think. I’m about to start going to therapy, which I’ve never done. I’m actually thinking about how these things affect my own mental state. I think as a man and a photographer and being a very serious athlete growing up, I’ve had to carry this kind of bravado and confidence. But at the same time, I’ve internalized all of the trauma and the way that I’ve dealt with that stuff hasn’t always been the best. So this has helped me rethink a lot about my personal health and well-being. It’s really interesting to think about how your craft or your art can help you slow down and take care of yourself.

AW: I think what gives my photographs power is the lived experience that comes through in them. When I look at my images, I see myself over and over again in so many different ways. And it’s strange to go out in the world and make photographs of things that aren’t yours, but to make them yours. That’s the power of photography that I believe in.

DY: At the start of June, you posted a powerful photo and caption on Instagram. You ended the caption by announcing the title of your book set to be released later this year — “New City, Old Blues”— which is meant to speak to our current social moment. You’ve said before that you want your work to be written in American history. The current moment and movement against anti-Blackness should be a defining one for our country. How do you see your work fitting into it?

I can take you to the subway and we can ride the subway together and you may even be next to me when I make that image of the girl tying the durag. The making of the work is so banal most of the time, there’s no crashing moment, it just comes and then it’s gone. I think what photographers have the capability to do is to extract something that’s fleeting. Like that girl tying the durag — you see it, but you’re so caught up in trying to get home on this crowded train. My job is to not be caught up in that. My job is to be caught up in the vision, the emotion, and the personal pull. It’s my job to be on a constant internal search based on what’s happening in the outside world. What everyone else sees as something in their way, I see as material to use.

AW: So much of the history of photographs has been told through the lens of white photographers, especially white male photographers. My skin affects the way I work and I’ve never heard these conversations happen in photography. So I’m speaking my truth; I’m trying to bring awareness to what it’s like for Black photographers and Black artists to go out into the world and make work. It’s been complicated making that work, because I feel like my path is so different from what I know about photography.

DY: I know you care a lot about your community. Having lived in the same apartment since 2012, I’m sure you’re pretty well known around the neighborhood by now.

What role do you hope to play in your community?

"I’M TRYING TO MAKE WORK THAT ADDS DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES TO THE MEDIUM AND HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. I WANT TO MAKE VERY BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHS THAT ALSO SAY SOMETHING, THAT HAVE WEIGHT TO THEM."

AW: I wasn’t born here, I’m from Omaha, Nebraska, but when I started taking photography seriously, I knew I was part of Brooklyn. If I’m going to go outside with my camera and point my camera all around this place, I also have to look at myself and ask what my responsibility is to the people of this community. If I’m going to make work and say something about the people that live here, I’ve got to give something back; I can’t just take and not give. Hopefully, I will be able to be a mirror to what’s happening here: to the gentrification, to the displacement, to how the people on my block have been completely ignored by policies and people in office. I also just try to be an active community member and honest about how I go about what I do.

I’m trying to be true to myself and tell my story. And I think if I’m true to myself, then it’ll speak to other people. I’m part of the collective Black experience, but there’s also a very individual experience within that. I’m trying to make work that adds different perspectives to the medium and history of photography. I want to make very beautiful photographs that also say something, that have weight to them. There’s so much photography out in the world, so I don’t want to be adding nonsense, I want to add something that can stand the test of time. We’ll have to see what happens and if my work

DY: I love your series of photos of Cedric, the boy in your neighborhood. Could you tell me about your relationship with Cedric?

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Could you tell me more about your process of honing your skills?

AW: Cedric used to live across the street from me. He was part of the group of kids in my neighborhood that would be out on the street playing in the summer. Me and him just started getting really close. For probably five years straight, I would make photographs of him every time I saw him and it was always real organic. I would see him somewhere in the neighborhood or he would be getting off the bus from school. I started making tons of photographs of him and talking to him and mentoring him.

AW: It's cool, because that's how I've come to art.

I didn’t grow up going to museums. I wasn’t really introduced to art until I got to college. My whole framework goes back to how I was brought up, to this blue-collar way of working up to something. It’s real.

I know there's a lot of kids like me who grow up in a family that don’t have books around the house or play Beethoven, but you never hear about those artists. Nobody's heard about the artist who had an atypical path. I knew I wanted to help others who had a similar path to myself.

He moved last year and this upcoming school year, he’ll be a freshman in high school. So now for the next four years, I’m being very intentional about my interactions with him, mentoring him and finishing this photo project. I already have this seven-year document of this Black kid growing up in Brooklyn. Now, I can photograph his high school experience to wrap up the project. I want to make a book and let him tell his story. It’s going to be this beautiful document of his life growing up. Ideally, I want to help raise money for him to go to college. I hope all of this could be a gift to him.

DY: What’s next for you?

AW: I've been toying around with this idea of healing photographs: taking photographs I've been making in the morning and putting them on a different wavelength.

I’m spending a lot of time in the darkroom and touching up on printing. I’m in the studio and just taking it on at a different speed right now. I’m talking to publishers about my next book and there’s a lot of interest. I’m thinking about putting it out in 2021, once we get this vaccine, hopefully. Maybe spring 2021 is the move.

"WHEN I LOOK AT MY IMAGES, I SEE MYSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS. AND IT’S STRANGE TO GO OUT IN THE WORLD AND MAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THINGS THAT AREN’T YOURS, BUT TO MAKE THEM YOURS. THAT’S THE POWER OF PHOTOGRAPHY THAT I BELIEVE IN."

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Andre D. Wagner WRITING Dani Yan

It’s really special, it’s really beautiful. I think street photography gets written off as always being snapshots or careless photographs. But my project with Cedric started purely from street photography. I was just out in the world and making pictures and this thing happened organically.

Part of what I want to do is to strip away the carelessness that people associate with street photography. It can be careless, but if somebody is dedicated and does it well, it has some of the highest powers in photography. I think a project like this can hit all of those different notes. It started as pure pictures and my interest in this boy, and it turned into a whole documentation and story of a life. For me, that was powerful to have trust in myself and follow my instincts. I didn’t go out with a document or plan for how I wanted to do a 10-year project on Cedric. I didn't sit in my studio and dream this up.

I went out and just had faith in my process and my work, and it showed itself over time. I think it’s cool to have that way of making art, because that kind of working isn’t really talked about and promoted as much. It’s hard because you do need structure and you want to arrive at a place. But there’s also something to be said about letting loose within that structure.

DY: You’ve talked about that kind of balance in street photography before: having to hone your skills and be prepared, but also being free to improvise in the moment.

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opus With an illustrative history throughout art, entertainment, and even cityscapes, typography, the style and appearance of printed matter, has cemented itself as an iconic feature of modern life. Printed and digital type communicate as much with each curved stroke, shadow, and serif as the word itself. The neutral simplicity of Helvetica graces the New York subway system, providing order and standardization. The timelessness of Futura allures movie-goers from glossy posters across genres.

And in some cases, the typography becomes synonymous with the cultural phenomenon it illustrates.

Moreover, typography works in harmony with surrounding graphic design. Aaron Denton, a graphic designer and freelance artist based in Bloomington, Indiana, embraces this comprehensive approach. FORM chatted with Aaron Denton to discuss his beginnings in live music, creative process, and sources of inspiration.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Aaron Denton WRITING Sofia Zymnis, Sawyer Uzzell, Sebin Jeon & Stephanie Cutler

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Sofia Zymnis: Thank you so much for joining us today. I want to ask you how you got into design in the first place.

Is typography something that always interested you?

Or did you originally study something else in college?

no one really cares what the poster looks like— as long as it’s confidently put together, bands don’t typically have an art direction for their poster. They’re just kind of like, "well, do whatever," and we’ll have something to advertise this show with. So, it’s a really good space to grow and to like learn new techniques and get excited about things.

Aaron Denton: I studied art history and english literature in college, so I was never planning on doing graphic design for a living. I got into it through— I was putting on a lot of shows for bands from out of town during college. I realized that having a good poster was a great way to get people to come out for the show. Or at least it made me feel like I was doing something for the bands that I loved, you know?

Sawyer Uzzell: With the posters you were making for different bands, how did you balance the band’s identity with your own creative vision?

AD: Luckily, a lot of the bands that would hit me up, I knew or was a fan of. I think one of the things that made this design work easier was that I play music and I was in a band. So thinking about how someone’s music looks is pretty easy for me. Like, you can get kind of a vibe on what you think a band sounds like, and then you can make something that’s appropriate for them.

At Indiana, they give you Adobe. So I was making really simple flyers in Photoshop CS6. It was just fun— I was working so hard in school, and college demands so much of your brain that it felt good to do something kind of creative outside of it.

Although I had two degrees, after graduation I worked at a restaurant, played music a lot, and went on tour, continuing to make posters for that kind of stuff. My band started putting out records. We couldn’t afford to hire a designer to do a layout for the LP or anything like that, so I learned how to do it. I started putting stuff on Instagram, probably in 2015? Something like that. That’s when people started caring about the work outside of my little Bloomington circle.

SU: Knowing that you are still involved in music, how does that impact your design and influence your creative vision, being so involved in this music culture?

AD: Since I play music, I understand what it means and what bands are after. I think a lot of designers come from a graphic design background, which is really problem-solving-based and trying to find the slickest way to do something, and that’s just kind of not where I come from. I use the same creative techniques that I use in making music to make designs, so I think that resonates with musicians and the music world.

I started gaining some jobs, some commissions from people I didn’t know, which was totally crazy. But I was working like 60 or 70 hours a week between this serving job at a restaurant and then going home and designing until two in the morning. I was spending a lot more time on the designs, and they were getting more intricate. And then, in November of 2017, I was featured on this design website called “It’s Nice That,” and I was super sick with the flu. I was on my Instagram, and it was like: “You have 200 new followers.” And I was like what the hell is going on? I realized that they published the article. And the new followers were designers and people whose work I really liked.

After that morning, I started getting a lot of commissions from the UK, which is where “It’s Nice That” is based.

Also, it kind of snowballs— if you start doing something in a design lane, people are just gonna want you to keep going down that lane. So, having done music stuff from an early age, it’s just kinda like a natural progression. But I like working in the music world. There’s no money in it, so that’s a problem, but it’s a good area to have because it lets you do whatever you want.

SZ: How much do you rely on the bands’ input versus your own vision for the posters?

SZ: Wow, that’s amazing how everything progressed so naturally. You mentioned that you started with poster design.

When you started getting to commissions, was it mostly posters or did you start getting other design jobs as well?

AD: When you freelance, every job is very different and you start to get to know your clients a little better.

For example, I worked with this band Khruangbin, and their bass player, Laura, used to be an art director. So she knows what she wants, and she’s pretty savvy about letting me do what I want, but also having a vision for it. And there are other bands who I don’t even talk to. I don’t get to talk to Tame Impala, because they have two managers and you talk through their managers. It’s cool though, because there’s not as much pressure. In that case, they’re like, “Do whatever you want! Change the font a little bit!”

AD: Yeah, it was posters. I played at this Bloomington music venue, The Bishop, all the time with bands. I was doing posters for the shows that we played. And then, the promoter there, who I’m friends with, asked if I wanted to design a poster for a show I wasn’t playing. I started doing consistent posters for that venue and that promoter. It naturally progressed to doing artwork for bands and LP layouts and stuff. Now I’m doing a lot more commercial work with different companies.

It’s all over the place. It’s logos and type treatments and stuff, and I mean posters are still something that I love to do.

Unfortunately, all that work has evaporated, but I miss how

Sometimes you work with promoters too. It’s actually kind of rare to work directly with a band, because they only have so much bandwidth, and musicians aren’t very good at thinking visually.

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SZ: Moving a bit to a different direction, I mentioned to you that each semester, our magazine has a different theme. The theme for this semester is memory, and I noticed that your work has a retro and surrealistic aspect to it. I wanted to ask if that’s always been part of your style. How did you develop that visual style?

AD: I’ve got this big Milton Glazer book, which is sick.

These giant books were a thing in the ‘70s. Do you guys know Peter Max? He was a commercial artist in the ‘70s, and he made these giant books, which were really cool.

Other than that, I’ve got a bunch of these Graphis books, ever heard of these Graphis poster books? Check them out! They’re really cool because it's less about individual artists and is more about all the advertisements— the best advertisement from 1977. If I’m stuck, I’ll surround myself with these books. They’re cool because they’re not algorithm-based. I’m not being fed what the internet thinks I think is cool. It's more like I’m using my actual eyes.

AD: That’s always been a style that I’ve been drawn to, like soft psychedelic artwork from the ‘70s. I really like artwork that can come across as playful but still artful. I do get that word, “retro,” a lot, but the thing about the word “retro” implies that you’re kind of looking back. It kind of implies a pastiche quality, and I actually don’t relate that much. I’m not trying to make a relic. I just think artwork from the 70s and 80s was a lot better than artwork today.

So those are my inspirations, and I guess that’s why I’m drawn to those colors and textures. They just appeal to me more— it’s a real feeling thing, they’re just more pleasurable.

I don’t think it's necessarily healthier or more creative to name your favorite designers and artists and pin your brain like that because it narrows you, and makes you want to create work similar to theirs. But if you’re constantly surrounding yourself with visual inspiration, it's gonna come together like a weird ball of ideas and I think that creates things that are a little bit more unique. I try to stay away from the internet for inspiration. It’s hard because there are so many good designers on Instagram right now.

Pinterest is a really powerful tool in some ways, and in other ways I feel like it’s overwhelming: you get on there and you’re looking at stuff and there is so much art. But, for some reason, the books, when I surround myself with them, I don't feel that way. They feel really welcoming to me.

SZ: Do you design your own typefaces, or is it something you find and you tweak to look how it does?

AD: I don’t make typefaces. That’s a common misconception about my work. A lot of people think that the typefaces are custom, but I really milk them into my designs. That’s a big aspect of my work— working with type at the same time as composition, and form, and color so it can come off as a cohesive whole. I think because of that, a lot of people think I’m making typefaces. The type thing comes from the same part of my brain that record collecting does for me— like, I want to find the records that are unique, and weird, and no one’s heard them before, and I want to hear them. Nowadays, the Internet is like, you can go on Youtube and find any cool record, but if you’re actually digging in a record store and finding something weird, there’s a chance that not many people have heard it except for you. I think the same way about typefaces.

SZ: I need to buy more books to get more inspiration! It’s kind of like a rabbit hole, on the Internet. Like Pinterest, you click on something and something else is suggested, so it's just basically infinite.

AD: Yeah and you can't get the diversity of mediums and ideas on those planes. Because they want you to see things that you’ve seen before. And that is parallel to the idea of like, when you make work, whatever you’re making, people are going to want you to keep making that one thing and doing that thing. When you get into that rut, there’s no room to grow and be excited about new ideas. I feel like the books are a way to calm that.

Have you heard about these Letraset books? It’s very cool— Letraset is a kind of stenciling typeface, and I bought a lot of Letraset books on eBay. I can get them and digitize them or scan them in, then vectorize them and put them into Photoshop. I do that a lot. I recreate old typefaces, but I don’t make new ones because making a typeface seems like one of the hardest things you could ever do, and there’s not much appreciation for it either. You know what I mean? And there are so many beautiful good ones that are not used as much anymore, because there are too many, and modern design focuses on type so much. I feel like modern design tries to create the most angular, crazy type. I don’t feel like focusing on that, even though I really like typography. Its relationship to the art is interesting to me, not the type in and of itself.

SZ: Could you walk us through your creative process?

From commission to brainstorming to the books to the first design— all the steps you take.

AD: It depends on what or who the client is. You know, like sometimes it's really easy because they’ll need a poster for this band. I’ll listen to the band and if I’m familiar with the band then I’ll just live with that for a while. I think it's good to actually schedule off 3 or 4 days after you receive the brief to just let it stew inside you. I think your brain needs time to digest it and to decide how this thing is going to look. So that would be like listening to the band for me, kind of, but also just like thinking about what I’m

SZ: In general, where do you get your inspiration from?

You mentioned your records, and the books you scan, but is there anywhere else you get inspiration for your work?

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interested in at the time. Like, you don't always have to serve the client in such an intense way, they know you need to follow your process for your work. That’s what they want.

AD: Actually, it hasn’t affected my professional life that much at all. I recently got some representation for commercial work, so now I’m doing more of that. Which is interesting and weird to get used to because it’s a lot of speculative stuff.

I do plenty of drafts, but I’m not rough sketching ideas for clients before going into them. I know what they want and they’ve shown me work that they like of mine, but I’m just gonna kind of do what I want. And I’m going to experiment in Adobe.

So you do things for companies and they don’t come out for like six months, whereas in the music industry, they ask for a poster, and it’s on the internet in four days. But this work is commercial work, where you’re working with a team of people. But the pandemic has made me sluggish, slower, it's harder to meet deadlines for me and ideas are coming slower. My life hasn’t really changed that much. But I really rely on going out to a bar at the end of the night because I’m in my house all day. My community here is really important to me, and I haven’t seen them this year. Yeah, it’s affected me in the same way that it has affected a lot of people.

I sometimes say that I like to work holistically, which I think is probably a bad way of putting it, but I do like to work on everything at once. I'm doing texture, color, form and type all at the same time, and everything is growing up together. Everything is maturing.

I also love destroying ideas. And I feel like if you work too closely with a client, things become really precious for them, so you need to be really careful about what you show them first. Sometimes when it's a rough draft, I get too scared that they’ll be too tied to it. And I typically like to destroy designs two or three times in the course of making one. And I really like that feeling: when you’re just like, “ugh, this isn’t working.” Something’s wrong, something’s wrong — and then you’re like, “Oh yeah! I’m the creator of this. I can kill it.”

But I’ve also had so many projects put on hold. I did a poster that I worked so hard on in the spring for a show that was going to be in July and then the show got postponed to next July. To think that I still haven’t shared that work, and to not know if it’s even going to happen, it’s painful. And it’s hard to see musicians I worked with put out records and then try to promote their records from home. Have you seen that meme where, like, the world is burning and there’s an artist who’s like ‘Who wants some art?’ — it kind of feels like that sometimes.

SZ: You mentioned that you use Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. How do you get all the textures digitized; do you scan and then digitize them? How does that work?

SZ: I think that it has benefited the design sector, but the music industry has definitely suffered a lot. There’s nothing they can do, they’re just on hold indefinitely.

AD: Let me show you. This right here is a Matisse book, and I scanned the back of this, and this is all the texture. This is it. It’s one scan. People offer me money on Instagram to send them my textures. But it’s all from an old book I scan.

AD: I feel really bad for all my buddies who’ve been trying to put out records and all the labels who I like. I’ve been buying all their records, but it’s sad not to get to see live music. I mean, I haven’t gone this long without seeing a show my whole life.

In Photoshop you can do whatever you want, you can apply this however you want. You put it on, and you do overlay or do some noise on it, and you just mess with it the whole time and it kind of all melts together. There’s no secret with the texture thing. I see people selling textures on the Internet; that’s a scam. Just find an old book and experiment around with it in Photoshop. I also have one other one, which is just like a crinkled up piece of paper that I just crinkled up and then scanned in, and I sometimes use that one, but it's the Matisse. It’s literally, the file is called Matisse texture.

SZ: Is there any project you’re currently working on that you’re excited about or would like to share with us?

AD: Well, I’m working on some merch right now for this band called Fleet Foxes. So that’s been on my mind the past couple of days. I would say that the poster that I worked on was for this band Bright Eyes, which is a really important band to me and I’m really proud of this thing too, so I really hope to get to share it soon. I’ve been in this little conversation with their manager trying to share it. So that’s probably what I’m most excited about. But it has been kind of a weird year, I don’t know, I feel like I’m in a transition phase right now as far as what I’m interested in making. I’m still trying to find it, you know?

SZ: So none of the pages inside of the book, just the white back?

AD: Yeah, just the white back! Well, the pages inside of the book are real inspirations. Look at that. I just love the cover.

Like, this week, I just let the book sit on my desk because it's so beautiful.

SU: How has the lockdown and the pandemic impacted your work?

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OPUS

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NÓSTOS

nóstos PHOTOGRAPHY Sofia Zymnis WRITING Advaitha Anne

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It is early; the skies are lonely The soothing ripples and lucid waters Keep for good company The shore has been captive With only the floating waves cautiously stroking it The ocean has kept her journeys, her confidences.

I sway on the still water.

Side to side, the breeze tugs me, Between the overarching trees guarding the lands And the glossy waters, Idyllic and mirrored, Teasing us about the depths of the journey under To finally reach the hearth, Warmer than the blazing summer sun reflections Skipping across the water’s surface.

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Ithaca remains on my mind.

She calls to me through the salty wind, Past the glistening islands, Through the time between us, Gifting me with not only a goal, a haven But with the adventure of finding her again, As I reminiscence and savor the sights around me, Traveling the infinite space between us.

The sea is calm, yet my heart lightly aches, Waiting to feel complete again.

Drifting close to the shore, I hear those who escaped this journey, And have stayed mortal Their voices echo in the wind, Veiled by the dense air Enveloped by the heat Evaporating off their skin.

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NÓSTOS

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The garden welcomes me, a final destination on this odyssey.

The orchard, still blooming, Breathing in the same, sharp, reviving air Scents of clean florals and crisp pines, Immortal, And preserving ephemeral memories.

Homecoming.

Yet, as I gaze out across the sky I find myself aching to be Woken by the dew of the sea At the end of each longer day Just so I can come back, again.

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OUTSIDE/

/INSIDE

Art & Design

Jeffrey Gibson is an artist based in Hudson, New York. He was raised in cities around the world, from Germany, to Korea, to England, to the United States. His art reflects his global upbringing, as well as his own queer and Choctaw-Cherokee identities. A McArthur Fellow, Gibson has explored various artistic disciplines and mediums in his ever-evolving practice.

His works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Denver Art Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art, and more. FORM spoke to Gibson about memories, monuments, and museums.

Dani Yan: The theme for our issue is memory: how has your memory of your upbringing, growing up all over the world with basically no other Choctaw or Cherokee people around, influenced your work?

Jeffrey Gibson: It gave me a lot of skills that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I learned very quickly what it was like to be a foreigner. When you’re a kid, you’re not really thinking about cultural differences as much as you’re excited by foreign things. I was excited by things that I had never seen before, foods that I had never tasted before, new sounds and smells. It was a very experiential exploration of a new place.

You would realize that you’re a foreigner, but then slowly, over time, you shift from being somebody on the outside looking in to having an interior perspective and being a part of things. And then I would move again and be a foreigner all over again. I think about that a lot: the line between participant and observer. And also the idea of trying to remain curious. I think there’s an ethical way of looking at another culture, but then I also feel like once I’m in my studio I have to be able to play. And I still have to be able to let myself be curious and experiment with things— that’s an important part that came from my childhood.

DY: Your work is not only engaged with Native histories, but also queer histories and other subcultures. You’ve said that you’re using these histories to write new stories. What are these stories?

"I GREW UP NOT SEEING MYSELF IN A LOT OF MOVIES, NOT SEEING MYSELF IN A LOT OF NARRATIVES. AND IT WASN'T UNTIL I WAS AN ADULT THAT I REALIZED BY NOT SEEING OURSELVES, WE DON'T BECOME AUTHORS. WE DON’T BECOME OUR OWN AUTHORS." JG: I think they're us, I think they’re the people who are living today who haven't been represented in the past. I grew up not seeing myself in a lot of movies, not seeing myself in a lot of narratives. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized by not seeing ourselves, we don't become authors.

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your experience but also those of other marginalized groups, who you acknowledge in the piece. Has your understanding of America shifted at all since making that piece?

We don’t become our own authors. Western and European cultures have created plays, music, films, and novels for a Western and European audience. It’s an incredible feeling to know that your audience can relate to you, and that your audience is on this journey with you. That’s what those narratives are: how we live everyday right now, who we are.

JG: I’ve never experienced the United States as divided as it is right now, and I think we’re potentially looking at it becoming even more divided. Some things from our country’s history that we thought we had resolved are shockingly still present— those challenges and problems and prejudices. Especially as someone who grew up moving around so much, I have defended the United States to people who misunderstand American culture, I have felt proud to be American at different times, but suddenly, that American flag feels very exclusionary. My flag was meant to speak to that developing exclusion, and how it’s not representative of the people who live here.

DY: Building more on this theme of memory, Indigenous people and culture are so often stuck in the memory of the American public, in the sense that they are seen as frozen in time. This is, of course, not the case, and erases the contemporary Indigenous experience. Do you think your work combats that? How so?

JG: My intention is to make space for people to see themselves or to see a space made available for them. I want you to see that there’s a space for you in the museum, I want you to see that there’s a space in creative making and in the aesthetic and material histories that we come from. That’s the space that I want to create. But I think the institutional and commercial world is pretty amazing at absorbing that information and branding it and turning it into a new product— it’s a little frightening. It’s a monster machine to come up against.

DY: You mention this moment of resistance that we’re in right now. When speaking about your punching bag series, you’ve brought up the idea of fighting: not physically with fists or weapons, but with ideas and words. In this current moment of resistance and survival, what do you think is the best way to fight? Is it one or the other, or some combination of the two?

JG: That’s a hard question, because I’m at a place in my life right now where I have a lot of responsibilities.

I have worked really hard to carve out the space that I occupy right now. I’m trying to be as responsible with that as possible, and that's my version of fighting.

I think about the song that I listened to that made me feel connected, or the painting that I saw that made me feel connected, the exhibition that I saw, the book that I read.

I hope to put things out in the world that someone will see when they’re a child, or stumble across when they’re in college, or see in a museum.

I have a lot of respect for people who are choosing to spend this time as frontline activists, who are getting arrested and putting themselves in harm’s way. At the beginning of quarantine, I was definitely questioning whether continuing to make work was the right way to spend time during all this.

Especially after the murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and so many others. And I looked back at the work that I’d made over the last five to seven years, and I realized that I had been speaking to these issues. It wasn’t like I needed to pivot and pick up a new subject, it was just that I felt that I needed to be present in this conversation with what I had already done and also try to envision what happens next.

"I WANT YOU TO SEE THAT THERE’S A SPACE FOR YOU IN THE MUSEUM, I WANT YOU TO SEE THAT THERE’S A SPACE IN CREATIVE MAKING AND IN THE AESTHETIC AND MATERIAL HISTORIES THAT WE COME FROM. THAT’S THE SPACE THAT I WANT TO CREATE." You don’t really know when your work is going to connect with somebody, but I know that those are the spaces that gave me hope for where I wanted to be as an adult and I’m assuming that there are other people in the world who are looking at those same spaces as a space for them.

That’s the best I can do right now. And it’s really effective, because it’s actually up to that individual. I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything. It’s really up to that individual— when they see something that connects with them, it’s their responsibility to move on it. It’s not my responsibility to make them move on it. It’s up to them.

I still hold very tightly to the basic ideas of democratic freedom of speech, so I’m not looking for everyone to agree with me, but I am looking for those people who disagree to behave in civil ways and allow for each other to speak. Our freedoms collectively should protect us. But there’s so much hypocrisy and calling it out doesn’t seem to be doing anything. I think that leaves us in a place of stunted speech and anger and frustration. And I’m not sure that ideas and words can hold up in the face of all of this.

But I do look back historically, and especially art historically to the '50s or the '60s or the '40s or the '30s, and I am really so glad that artists of color and queer people continued making portraits, and painting of flowers, and poems. I

DY: One of your works that reminds me of this is “Keep on Moving,” from the 2019 Whitney Biennial. You’ve said that the flag represents your understanding of America through

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think had they chosen to take that energy to make protest signs, it would have been a loss. I’m glad that those other kinds of work were made when they were. And so during this time, I’ve been very happy to partner with activists and to offer my work in support of them. But I think that I’m doing what I know is important to do.

DY: Most recently, your piece “Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House” was revealed at the Socrates Sculpture Park. It’s really a monumental work, and monuments are now the topic of much debate because of their role in shaping our history and our memory.

Your monument is not as permanent as most of the statues under fire, but its presence is undeniable — what history do you want your monument to reflect? What do you want the public memory of your monument to be?

JG: I think there’s a lesson in there, which is that time moves on. An artwork or a photograph can give you a snapshot of a moment in history. While change has always happened, and we’re living in a moment where change is marked so rapidly. I think that makes monuments outdated, unless they can accommodate for all the change that is happening.

It’s important to stop trying to control the narrative and just acknowledge the one that's unfolding. If a monument is trying to dictate one perspective of an event to celebrate, then it simply isn’t true. The truth is that there are an infinite number of narratives that happened in one event.

How do you accommodate that without erasing anybody?

I think monuments are problematic to begin with. They serve a popular need for a collective point for us to remember, but the specificity that monuments attempt to have marks their failure.

"TIME MOVES ON. AN ARTWORK OR A PHOTOGRAPH CAN GIVE YOU A SNAPSHOT OF A MOMENT IN HISTORY. AND WHILE CHANGE HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED, AND WE’RE LIVING IN A MOMENT WHERE CHANGE IS MARKED SO RAPIDLY." DY: What you said about different interpretations makes me think about the role of text in your work. You’ve included everything from Prince lyrics to E.E. Cummings poems to James Baldwin quotes—how do you decide on what text to use and how do you want your audience to interpret it?

JG: It varies. I collect texts pretty regularly — I have a running list on my phone, I send myself emails or texts, and I search for them when it's time. And it varies depending on the project.

For instance, right now, we’re in the early stages of working on a project with recent immigrants who are weavers. And so

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DY: You mentioned having to shift your perspective on things throughout your career. Have you changed how you look at or approach your own work?

I’m thinking about what text makes sense for that. If I’m doing a show, I’m looking for a group of texts that speak to a topic.

It’s kind of like what I was saying before. I could choose texts that are about anger and frustration and sadness, but I think it’s important to put out into the world some proposals about what happens next. I would hate for the conversations that stem from my work to be divisive, when really, at the end of the day, we are all going to have to be able to come back together and we are all going to have to be able to have a conversation together. Because we’re on this planet together, and that’s how it is. And so it’s important to me that the texts that I use don’t omit anybody, and that anybody can approach them and project their own narratives onto the texts, and have their own self-reflective moments with it.

JG: I’m going to go back to this idea of authorship. It's not just a me thing or a person of color thing. Generally, I feel like to stand out and to say in your own voice what you think is important and to put it out there in the world for other people to look and judge and criques takes a kind of confidence which I think is probably counterintuitive.

It doesn’t come naturally; you have to force yourself to do some of that work and perform your way out of being an unconfident person. Now, I am in a position where I get opportunities that I never thought I would’ve had. But it’s because I did exactly what I just said. It’s because I learned how to answer a question directly, I learned how to be honest when being asked a question. I stopped preparing for talks and I just started being present and trying to connect with people and really be honest. Being able to think on my feet and to be present and really listen has made me unafraid. My decision-making now is so much easier than it’s ever been.

DY: I think good art can really create space, not just for artusts, but for all people. But I think in order to create space for different kinds of people to find themselves in the art, the artists can’t always be the same kinds of people. The art world, and especially the museum sector, has really been forced into a long-overdue racial reckoning in the past few months.

In a short period of time, decades of still-persisting racism in the art world has been publicized and institutions have already struggled in their response. As someone who both comes from very marginalized communities and has a lot of experiences with museums—both as staff and as artist— what do you think museums can and should do to make meaningful changes to how they fulfill their responsibilities?

DY: You’ve said that you’re open to your process developing organically. Where do you feel it headed now?

JG: During COVID, I’ve accepted three commissions for film and video projects. We’re in the final stages of one, in the editing process for the second one, and at the beginning stage of the third one. And then along with that, we’ve been doing performances at the sculpture park. I think quarantine and everything moving online continued to allow for performance and video. I think it’s been a crash course in those mediums.

I’m really proud of what we’ve produced. I definitely see more installation and performance and video in my future.

It comes from my relationship to objects and understanding that something you can’t do with just displaying the object itself. So if the object is a drum, we can play it. It makes sound and sound invokes movement. There are all these qualities that can't be exhibited by the object alone.

"IF MUSEUMS CAN MAKE A DECISION TO HAND OVER POSITIONS OF POWER TO PEOPLE COMING FROM OTHER NARRATIVES WHO CAN PLACE WHAT’S SHOWN IN THE MUSEUM RELATIVE TO THEIR NARRATIVES, THEN WE WOULD HAVE RADICALLY DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS."

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson WRITING Dani Yan

JG: They need to hand over some of the primary positions of power to people who have already been doing this work.

That's it. Museums have served a lot of great purpose in our culture, but they’re all still currently relative to a Western white American narrative. Everything else is positioned relative to that. As an art student, as a curatorial student, an art history student, a philosophy student, you are learning to compose yourself relative to a Western European narrative, and everything else is considered alternative or minority or marginalized. I had to tell myself for a long time: when we are together, when Choctaw people are together, we are not minorities to each other. If museums can make a decision to hand over positions of power to people coming from other narratives who can place what’s shown in the museum relative to their narratives, then we would have radically different institutions.

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Creative Writing

My dearest,

a love

I hope you’re doing well. What are your new friends like?

Not as charming as you, I imagine. It’s hard not having you around, but the memories of us keep me going. I often like to think of our first meeting: I had just moved to the city and was in search of a friendly face. I felt like a drop of water that landed in a sea of black ice. It was cold and dark and far too large, but still more comfortable than the glaring eyes of my hometown. And in the icy darkness, you found me.

There was an instant connection when our eyes met on the subway, but this connection transcended into our souls. On our first evening together, I learned that you too escaped your hometown. You too liked classic Hollywood films and cheap Pinot and the smell of gasoline. You too felt alone, and needed help. You needed my help. You looked me in the eyes, held my hand and told me to love you. That was all I wanted. And so I did.

On that second evening, you protected me from the stares of men on the street. You’ve always been a protector.

Whenever my friends suggest that I run, or my mother pries into our life, you know just how to quiet their paranoia. You guard my mind from the jealous voices demanding your fall from the spotlight in which you belong. You protect us. I’ve always loved that about you.

The longer we stayed together, the louder the voices grew. I wasn’t quite sure why, though — didn’t they know you needed me? That I would take care of you?

I would fix you, I told them. It’s not your fault you’ve been shattered. It’s not your fault that everyone is scared to touch broken glass. Everyone except for me.

And when we moved into the small, quiet suburb, you gave me the most comfortable life. You let me cook your favorite filets and paid for every meal; we shared the Jaguar on our nights out of town. Being alone in the house meant I finally had time to read and find the true meaning of tranquility. My friends only spoke poorly of you, and negativity, you told me, would stain the entire house. And besides, when I didn’t have to worry about them coming around, I had more time with you.

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A LOVE LETTER

My precious, precious time with you. Laying in bed, side by side, hand in hand, knowing you would always guard me. If I got out of bed, to grab a glass of water, perhaps, you would grab my neck, pulling me closer until I laid limp in your arms. Every moment felt both detached from and on top of the world. You were my one and only. Even if you hurt me, it was out of love, because you wanted me to become a better person. How can we improve without criticism? You, my love, made me stronger.

I’m sorry they took you away from me. I never meant for this to happen. I tried to keep you, I really did. I stood in that courtroom and told the crowd about how much you cared for me, how you would never hurt me and you never have. All of your love marks decorating my wrists and neck are nothing more than jewelry crafted from passion. But they — the jury, the judge, my friends — they don’t see it that way. They see my sweater collection and watch obsession as a sign of shame.

And how could they see it any other way when they only know you in orange? If they knew you like I do, if they knew of your dark past and bright future, they would understand.

They cuffed your wrists in cold metal, and the image felt strangely familiar. I felt your warm hands act as the metal did, pushing into my bones harder and harder until my fingers dangled with the pins and needles of your desire. It was only because you wanted me, right? Why else would you hold on so tight?

This is my fault. If I had never made you angry, you would still be with me. If I could only keep you happy, we would still be together, side by side, hand in hand. They were already pulling you away, though. In that final moment, you looked me in the eyes, held my hand, and told me to love you. That was all I wanted. And so I did. And I still do.

Tell your new friends I say hello.

letter

WRITING Skyler Graham

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Style

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The Transformation When I joined, FORM was predominantly fashion. And I would say the magazine was an older layout, modeled off of like an Elle, or an InStyle.

- Tory '17 But between my sophomore and junior year, I would have to attribute the shift to Kojo. I think he has such a strong vision, and his vision has changed the trajectory that FORM is on. Part of it is not having less of a focus on fashion, but making sure FORM’s focus is on other sections, like Art & Design and Travel & Culture, as well.

- Gianna '19 My sophomore spring, Gabi told me I was going to be Editor-in-Chief. So I had the whole summer after to think about how I wanted to change. I knew I wanted FORM to change very massively, very structurally. I knew I wanted to change the identity of FORM. And the magazines I read over the summer informed the new identity of the magazine in profound ways. Even the separation of Art & Design, Style, and Travel was itself taken in certain ways from Cereal Magazine.

- Kojo '18 The focus of the magazine shifted from being about fashion and high-fashion to reflecting the local and the campus heartbeat. We collaborated with RUNAWAY, the Durham lifestyle industry and brands, we featured places in Europe, and in Durham like the Durham Hotel, and the local, sustainable fashion boutique, Vert & Vogue, capturing yet more of the heartbeat of the campus and the heartbeat of the city that we're in.

- Cassidy '18 FORM’s mission was now to create a space, like a kind of refuge for the overstimulated, pressurized, Duke psyche.

And I think there was definitely an emphasis through images and texts to create this space for reflection, for contemplation, for calm, for slowing down. And then also, at the same time to expand the magazine beyond the confines of Duke, to create a network with people thinking like us in the Research Triangle Area.

- Kojo '18

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The sunrise welcomes the day and the sunset bids it farewell.

The daylight praises warmth, recreation, and revival while moonlight whispers rest. But there is a sliver of time between the sleepy sun’s kaleidoscope of hues and the cloak of darkness, rebuked and overlooked: blue hour.

Blue hour is a period of waiting, a season of “the almost but not quite,” the lacuna that disjoins the present and future.

Blue hour fills voids and constructs a liminal space from the vacuum.

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Living in liminality is the uneasiness of unbelonging. There’s no closure and no sense of freedom from.

Liminality is waking up from a dream, being caught in between the reverie of your mind and the grounding of reality. The dream which hangs below your conscience and erases assurance. The tugging in the back of your mind that questions not only where you are, but where you belong.

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While blue hour reflects the unease of unbelonging, there is a comfort in knowing where you are. In holding on to the light of the day and knowing there is resolution at night.

The sky reaches the break of its transformation, from the glaring golden rays of the sun to shining lunar glow. The sky is at peace with itself, in its knowing. No longer does the sun penetrate skin and restrict breath. Not yet, though, has the mischief of night life taken over.

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In this moment, the two forces are equal with each other. The dimly lit sky — even on days with scorching heat, rapid winds, chaotic thunderstorms, and gloomy rains — can, in this moment, find harmony with the night.

Not quite melancholy, but also not exactly radiant. It is subtly, yet surely hopeful.

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PHOTOGRAPHY Jackson Muraika WRITING Stephanie Cutler & Skyler Graham MODELS Faith Gowen, Aloye Oshotse & Sana Pashankar

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An Interview with Duro Olowu

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Duro Olowu is a fashion designer and curator based between London and New York. Since launching his womenswear label in 2004, Olowu has won various fashion awards and designed dresses for the likes of Michelle Obama, Solange Knowles, and Tracee Ellis Ross. He continues to release collections, but recently, he has also found success as a curator of contemporary art. His largest and most recent curatorial project, “Duro Olowu: Seeing,” was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago from February to September 2020. The exhibition drew from Chicago’s museums and private collections, as well as Olowu’s own work. Both his curatorial and design practices are informed by his uniquely international and interdisciplinary sensibility. FORM spoke to Olowu about his multicultural upbringing, his creative eye, and the intersection between fashion and art.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Duro Olowu WRITING Dani Yan

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Dani Yan: You’ve always had a knack for mixing things up— whether that’s putting a work by Louise Bourgeois in the same room as one by Martin Puryear, or mixing unique textiles and patterns in your dresses.

What inspires you to create unusual combinations?

Duro Olowu: I grew up in a very cosmopolitan multicultural house: Nigerian father, Jamaican mother. I lived in Nigeria and then went to school in England. And that’s all I saw: people looking amazing by putting things together in unusual ways.

But the older you get, the more you get constrained by the limitations of the fashion world or the art world or the creative world. You realize how important it is to remember and hold onto this feeling that drives you to put things together in a certain way. It started with my prints and the clothes and the way I would juxtapose. It comes from a place that I know is genuine, but I can’t quite explain. I will not make a garment if I don’t feel it’s right. I just never make it. It’s really my last bastion of trust. And that’s also what I use to direct the shows and exhibitions that I curate.

DY: You’ve talked a lot about how much you value the eye of a child in your work. As a 53-year-old man, how do you channel that eye?

But the older you get, the more you get constrained by the limitations of the fashion world or the art world or the creative world. You realize how important it is to remember and hold onto this feeling that drives you to put things together in a certain way.

DO: Kids who are normally loud will walk into a museum and instantly calm down. For them, there’s no rule that this is blue because it should be blue, or this is black because it should be black. This is an artist of color, this is a woman artist. This is an old master, this is a contemporary artist. You just see this cacophony of art that amazes you.

My parents were supportive of creative freedom as long as I did my academic work. As a child, I was presented with artistic rules and I would always question them.

That kind of curiosity isn’t arrogance— I just have to keep the naivete that keeps me from thinking I know everything. And that — academia or academic superiority — certainly is not the answer to creating beauty.

DY: You’ve become a bona-fide curator and you’re also obviously an accomplished fashion designer. You’ve also always referenced visual art in your design work. What made you want to delve into the art world after establishing yourself in fashion?

DO: A few years ago, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn asked me if I wanted to curate a show at her gallery, and I agreed to do it.

All the big art critics went and it became this big show, and then I did another. It really started because people asked. I was busy and I had other things to do, so I didn’t have the time to independently consider a curatorial career until I was asked.

I consider myself very lucky because I am still running a fashion label, but I can run it in a very different way. I stopped showing the typical way a few years ago— I’m in

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control of that and it has allowed me to always work on my own terms, whether it’s in the fashion world or the art world. I didn’t want to lose my love of fashion, my interest in making clothes and textiles and fabrics, so I changed the way that I did it. I think, in some ways, that opened me up to curating, and a lot of people have approached me for projects.

DY: How do your curatorial and design processes differ?

How are they similar?

DO: With both art and fashion, I’m very quick. I can edit really quickly. I can look through a million things, and say yes, no or maybe quite quickly. And that’s great because I then have a huge repertoire that I can work with. I don’t overthink things and trust my intuition, but I’m still open to change.

With my fashion design, I have to consider the price of fabrics while ensuring amazing quality. With exhibitions, costs are less of a consideration, because museums and galleries usually manage that before they offer me the project.

I think the differences and similarities come together in a good way. I look at hanging art in a museum in the same way that I look at hanging art in my boutique. When people look at my clothes, I see them as being amongst the art. And vice versa: at museums, I think of people visiting as extensions of clothing and movement in the room. So they feed into each other.

DY: Right now, we’re seeing a ton of collaboration between fashion designers and artists, from a Keith Haring T-Shirt at Pacsun to Judy Chicago’s installation for Dior. As someone who is so involved in both the fashion world and the art world, how do you feel about the blurring lines between the two?

DO: This intersection has always existed in fashion. Many designers have been greatly influenced by art, and artists love clothes. I know some of the greatest artists in the world, and all they want to talk about is my clothes. They are obsessed with how something that starts flat becomes a three-dimensional, moving object. They treat clothes like a sculpture.

But what has happened in the past few years, unfortunately, is that so many middle people have gotten involved between the artist and the designer. Now it’s trend-based, it’s commercial, it’s so boring. I think it needs to become less superficial and more in-depth and honest— not just slapping something on a garment and calling it a collaboration. It’s not a collaboration.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not a collaboration.

When people look at my clothes, I see them as being amongst the art.

And vice versa: at museums, I think of people visiting as extensions of clothing and movement in the room. So they feed into each other.

DY: You’ve said before that your work is “absolutely” political. How so?

DO: My work is political because it really promotes the independence and strength of women. I try to make things as a man that are not patronizing to the women who wear them. I want to make clothes that make women feel comfortable, that makes them think “I got this.” And that’s politics— it’s body politics and it’s in everything.

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A war hero returns home, and his ship sits in the harbor. As a matter of pride, a token of respect, a nod to his heroism, the ship is kept visible in the harbor. Time passes and the planks in this wooden warship begin to rot. To keep the ship afloat, the planks are replaced, one by one, as they become ineffectual. This process continues until half the ship’s planks are not the same as those with which the hero won his battle. Later, only a few scattered planks remain composed of original wood, until finally the entire ship is made of replacement planks.

Questions arise: Is this ship still the hero’s ship? If not, at what point can we make that distinction? Was it the moment the first plank was changed when the ship became a new one, or was it when the last original plank was removed? Or perhaps it was somewhere in the middle.

The iterations of this question continue; the hero returns home and the parts of his ship taken apart completely, and rebuilt just as they had been. Is this the same ship? What if those same planks are used to build another ship? The spiraling of questions is endless— the Ship of Theseus thought experiment has engaged thinkers for hundreds of years. It asks how we define, measure, and understand the concept, significance, and mutability of identity.

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For philosophers attempting to nail the complex question of identity, memory is a contestant among the theories they have proposed.

It is perhaps the neatest answer to the Ship of Theseus dilemma.

It is the conception of the ship as the original Ship of Thesus, the memory of that state, that lasts. In other words, our memories are our realities, whether or not they are objectively so. We live in them.

Other suggestions for the nature of identity look at the physical body, or a soul-like-presence. The physicality seems too small, too incremental— one plank’s absence should not change the nature of ownership. By that logic, wind erosion would de-identify the ship, and dying bodily cells would change one’s conception of self.

The idea that there is something more, something intangible, seems lofty.

It perhaps feels incomplete— we crave an answer that we can begin to unpack, to wrap our heads around. Memory seems the most practical.

It is rooted in reality, but inexplicable enough to be possible. But what does it mean for our identities to be rooted in something so dynamic?

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Memory seems the most practical. It is rooted in reality, but inexplicable enough to be possible. But what does it mean for our identities to be rooted in something so dynamic?

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We tend to fixate on forgetting only preemptively, and thus in real time we rarely doubt our realities. If memory defines identity, then the malleability that comes with that isn’t any less certain than objectivity.

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It means that we think of ourselves as more static than we truly are.

That’s scary to examine, but, for the most part, unreasonably so. We tend to fixate on forgetting only preemptively, and thus in real time we rarely doubt our realities. If memory defines identity, then the malleability that comes with that isn’t any less certain than objectivity.

In fact, the root of identity in our fickle memory makes objectivity an unfamiliar and irrelevant concept when applied to our actualities.

Rumor has it that every time you recall something, you only remember the last time you remembered it. That’s a bit of an oversimplification.

Instead, when we remember a moment, we remember the emotions associated with that moment, rather than the situational details present in the memory. We remember our reactions, and thus can quite easily warp this plastic information. It explains the Mandela effect; it explains telling a made-up story so many times that you start to believe it. We flip and frame our memories to help them fit into more favorable self-perception. And in doing so, we change our identities at our whim and often unknowingly.

It’s an unsettling concept, but it’s also freeing. Without a sense of strictness associated with our unconscious identity, we can let go of the strictness which is the conscious side of it. Why stress about forgetting a moment, slipping up on a convention, or saying the wrong thing, when there’s a way to escape from those mistakes?

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This is not to justify ignoring accountability in favor of a falsified personal reality. Practically, there are objective truths, mostly centered around large scale and systematic understanding. Instead, recognizing the looseness of memory and reality can allow us to understand our personal contradictions as natural, to better understand the complexities of the emotions we remember, and, perhaps most importantly, to dive deeper into our imaginations. We fall in love with stories and characters because the emotional response we have to them is as real as our “actual” experiences; that response is what we remember.

So, all this to say, under the assumption that our realities are rooted in memory, ignoring our shortcomings would be futile and unreasonable.

While keeping a reasonable sense of communal reality, there’s something completely sensical about factualizing fiction, embracing misremembering, and coming to terms with the normalcy of complexity and contradiction.

PHOTOGRAPHY Mindy Wu & Dani Yan WRITING Ali Rothberg MODELS Esther Hong & Gautam Iyer

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LIFT

Adeju Thompson is a fashion designer based in Lagos, Nigeria. Recently named a 2021 LVMH Prize semi-finalist, Thompson has been producing collections under their genderless label, Lagos Space Programme, since 2018. LSP is steeped in tradition yet concerned with challenging obsolete norms — it channels the past to change the future. Thompson’s projects are fueled by multidisciplinary collaboration, as well as the designer’s own identities and interests. The brand, which has been featured in Vogue and shown at Milan Fashion Week, continues to develop while staying true to Thompson’s vision. FORM spoke to Thompson about finding inspiration from various sources, collaborating with other outsiders, and continuing the conversations that inform their work.

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Dani Yan: The theme of our issue is memory, and I was really drawn to Lagos Space Programme because of its dual relationship with the past and the future. Your brand, even in its name, points towards the future yet your work is just as rooted in heritage, in the past. You’ve talked about the coexistence of tradition and change in your work — how do you navigate the balance between the two?

Adeju Thompson: First and foremost, I am a contemporary designer. I’m very aware of where I come from and the conversations that were happening before me, but I see myself as a sort of conduit to continue these conversations.

When I am working with the bronze casters in Benin or the ladies in southwestern Nigeria who make my Indigo dyes, I am going there because I am relying on their deep skill and knowledge, but they do things in a very traditional way, and I’m coming in with fresh, contemporary ideas.

I’m very intuitive, my process is very fluid. I’m using my modern sensibilities funneled through a Nigerian lens.

When a garment is made, as much as it is rooted in my identity as Nigerian person, I am very aware that these clothes and these objects travel. And while I want people to understand the deep history behind where my garments come from, I like the idea that a lab coat or shirt from Lagos Space Programme could be in Paris or Tokyo.

I’m fascinated by the technique and knowledge of the traditional artisans I work with, and it’s so beautiful to record and watch, but I want them to guide me to make contemporary objects. There’s this deep reciprocity between me and them, because I rely on them for their knowledge, and I’m also teaching them that it’s possible to make new things.

DY: I’m interested in this idea of your work travelling. As your work continues to gain traction outside of Nigeria, there will certainly be more people —especially from the West— trying to define your work and projecting their expectations on you. How will you stay true to your reality as this occurs?

AT: I’m African and my African-ness is a part of me, but I don’t want to be defined by the idea of being an “African designer.” I think that label has so much weirdness attached to it, and I don’t want it. I like heavy metal, I like industrial hip-hop, I like experimental music, I like jazz, I like everything that I like. And those things are always at the back of my mind. They’re not separated from my identity.

I made a film at the Osun Sacred Grove for Milan Fashion Week. The collection was inspired by Gélédé, and the site, where I made my adire, is a place of African heritage. But the film has moments of breaking, like the experimental divination sequence that causes a break in the middle of the film. For me, it’s always so important to have this break. It’s like dropping bolts in an engine.

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When a garment is made, as much as it is rooted in my identity as a Nigerian person, I am very aware that these clothes and these objects travel.

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I’m very aware that people who are not Nigerian will always try to put things on me and try to decide what my work is. I don’t have answers for everything, but I am very aware of what I want to do and what I want to create. I know I am going to stay true to who I am.

DY: You just mentioned some of the music that you like, and I know that you’re interested in a wide variety of cultures and people, from Julius Eastman to Yusuf Grillo to Yohji Yamamoto. Can you tell me more about those inspirations?

AT: I was in fashion school and I think my professor could see where my work was headed—I’ve been very true to who I am from the beginning—and he asked if I knew about the antifashion movement and the Japanese designers from the 80’s.

I looked them up and I was so inspired by these people who created clothes in such a vulnerable and thoughtful space.

One of the reasons my collaborations are so successful is because I collaborate with outsiders like myself. So when we’re working, we’re disconnected from egos — we’re just two people who are really excited to make things.

It’s funny because the first time I experienced Yohji’s clothing was when I moved back to Lagos, at this store called Stranger Lagos. It was owned by this couple who really embodied anti-fashion and only wore Yohji Yamamoto 24/7. It was so incredible to see people wearing this clothing in Lagos.

It did a lot for my seeing what was possible — I realized that I wanted to make clothing like that. Yohji has a great quote: “Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself.” It’s good to know that Yohji would be happy with me studying his work. But as someone who is constantly trying to push themselves, I wasn’t going to stay in that space. Once I understood his clothes properly, I could use that knowledge to build my own work.

DY: You’ve definitely found yourself — your personal voice is so clear in all of your work. But at the same time, I know sharing ideas and working with other creatives is key to your practice. In the past, you’ve linked up with artists like Dunja Herzog and David Gardner. Why is collaboration so important to you?

AT: Number one, I’m very aware of my limitations.

I’ve spent almost a decade fine-tuning my craft and I feel like I’ve become really good at it. Within my space, I want to try out different things, but I never want to disrespect the different fields. If I were to go and try to make jewelry, I wouldn’t know where to start.

When I’m collaborating with someone, it’s an exchange of ideas. One of the reasons my collaborations are so successful is because I collaborate with outsiders like myself. So when we’re working, we’re disconnected from egos — we’re just two people who are really excited to make things. With this collection, I had five simultaneous collaborations going on. I remember only having everything together when I shot my collection, but everything just came to

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light. For me, that’s collaboration, that’s cultural exchange.

I’m a very political person. I’m hyperaware of the deep trauma and history behind racism and my identity as a Black person.

But as much as I’m very proud of my identity and knowing the history behind it, I want to work with everybody. I want to foster conversations and dialogue within my work.

Like with David, the object we made was a conversation between a queer Nigerian artist and a queer white artist from Britain. It had so much weight, so much history.

DY: I think that dialogue within your object is important for viewers to consider, and it’s definitely something that will make me think about your work more deeply. That leads me to my last question: what do you want people to take away from your work? What do you want people to experience when they come in contact with your work?

AT: I want to share the history and the beautiful culture that I’m honored to be a part of. I want to cause emotions and break from weird notions of beauty and design.

When you come into Africa, when you come into Nigeria, there’s a different side. I’m someone that makes things that are very soft, very elegant, very dark. By dark I mean complex and layered, maybe not dark but vulnerable. It’s so important for me to be very honest.

I don’t care about people’s expectations, but I also like breaking ideas. I like showing that things are possible. But it’s not just from me — the concepts have always been there in my culture. I’m a designer and I’m doing new stuff, but I’m tapping into an incredible history. It’s always been a part of my heritage, and I just want to continue those conversations.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Isabel Okoro WRITING Dani Yan

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The Continuation When I became Editor-in-Chief, it was the same as directing Art & Design the previous year, but instead with three sections and nine to 12 pieces. What I loved the most was thinking about the theme for the volume and making sure that the story, that narrative, was implemented in every piece.

- Tommaso '20 As Editor-in-Chief, I wanted to make sure the magazine was a bit more cohesive. When I was the Communications Director, there were times where, despite our meetings, the travel section wouldn’t know what the art section was doing or what the style section was doing. I was communicating individually with each of the directors, but not necessarily everyone was communicating with each other, which led to a lot of issues. I wanted to make sure that everyone was absolutely on the same page about what we were doing with the magazine. The themes, a common thread running through the magazine, really helped.

- Gianna ‘19 The travel guides were also super important for two reasons: first our readers are drawn to the guides. I still get texts about people going to Chicago or Miami and visiting a place FORM featured. We were able to create something that can inspire someone to visit a place and learn about the history of that place. But secondly, we were able to put FORM on the shelf of different stores and places in different sites. I went to Ippodo Tea in New York a few months ago and the magazine was there. It becomes part of the space in a way.

- Tommaso ‘20 Changing the GBM structure was important to me as Editor-in-Chief. We went from having the general body meeting, like a breakout meeting each time, to having more of a lesson. This lesson was an opportunity to learn a new skill or how something functions in FORM. Also, creating as welcoming as an environment as possible was really key for me as a leader. FORM is a creative outlet at Duke, but I also do like working to challenge folks to create new things.

- Claire ‘20

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THE GROCERY STORE

An Interview with Stephanie Shih

Stephanie Shih is a ceramic artist based in Brooklyn. Born and raised in New Jersey, Shih never studied fine arts — she majored in journalism at Boston University before finding a career in ceramics. Since 2018, she has been adding to her Asian grocery store project, in which she captures the collective nostalgia of the Asian-American diaspora through miniature sculptures of groceries. With past shows at institutions like the American Museum of Ceramic Art and Perrotin Editions, as well as several gallery exhibitions coming up in 2021, Shih has garnered critical acclaim and a strong following despite her lack of formal training or gallery representation. FORM spoke to Shih about the multitudes of the Asian diaspora, her outsider perspective of the art world, and the politics in her work.

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Dani Yan: The feeling that I got from looking at your work is a bit like what I felt when I discovered Subtle Asian Traits (SAT) for the first time. I think the fact that the SAT Facebook page has exploded so much is a testament to just how broad and deep this shared Asian diasporic nostalgia is. One thing I noticed in SAT is how diverse the Asian community is, but also how almost all of these different nationalities still shared all of these memories and experiences. Do you actively try to account for a broader Asian diasporic population, with more countries of origin included, or do you mostly work based on your own experience?

SS: In the beginning, at worst, it was maybe treating it a little bit like a novelty. Back when I was just making the dumplings, I think non-Asian people saw them as a novelty item and they would make these kind of microaggressive jokes where it felt like they were trivializing the work. A lot of non-Asian people’s relationship to Chinese food, in particular, is through takeout, so they think of it as something very casual and cheap. I think that bled over into how people were talking about the dumplings.

But ever since I started making the groceries, I think that attitude fell off very quickly. I’m surprised at how few trolls I have, especially for someone who lives on social media and has a big social media following. To go back to what you were saying about the dialogue I’m able to have with my audience, I’m not shy on Instagram. I’m not afraid to talk about not wanting white feedback on something or to call out what I see as subtly or overtly racist comments.

Stephanie Shih: The project is not about my own childhood memory and my own nostalgia, but it is really about collective nostalgia and shared memory. There are a lot of pieces that are in the project now that I have never tasted. I've never used them, we never had them at home. It is important for me to reflect the broader experience of the diaspora in the work.

DY: I’m really interested in your process of making your sculptures, especially the dumplings. For me, folding dumplings—the edible kind—is a family activity, especially on holidays. What is your experience with folding real dumplings? How does it compare to the folding of ceramic dumplings?

In addition to a diversity in nationality or heritage, something that is important to me about the grocery project is that it encompasses a diversity of class as well.

These groceries are the same if you grew up under the poverty line or if you grew up very affluent.

DY: You said something really interesting in your feature in Garage: "I often talk about how we’re called AsianAmericans, but there's no place called “Asia-America''; there's no place we can go and only be around other AsianAmericans, so the cultural dialogue around art becomes that space." You interact with your audience a lot. In fact, I set up this interview by DM’ing you on Instagram. What kind of conversations have you found your work to be creating?

SS: Growing up, it wasn't something we did very often. It was something we did once a year at most. I think a lot of times when non-Asian interviewers want to talk about my experience with dumplings, they want to turn it into this thing that I do every night—like I just go home and fold dumplings. But my family didn’t do it that much. It’s not like it was muscle memory, it’s not like I just knew how to make ceramic dumplings because I had folded so many dumplings before. But it was still intuitive to me: the clay body that I chose for the dumplings is an English porcelain, so it has a lot of elasticity to it and makes it a lot like dumpling skin.

SS: A large part of my practice is these grocery polls that allow me to crowdsource the groceries that I myself am not familiar with, that I didn’t grow up with. We didn’t use fish sauce in my house until I was a teenager and my mom got interested in Thai cooking, so I don’t have a memory of the nostalgic brand of fish sauce and so I use the Instagram stories polls as a way to interact with and engage with the community.

"THIS PROJECT WAS MAKING ME THINK ABOUT HOW INTIMATE GROCERIES ARE—THEY’RE SOMETHING THAT WE BRING INTO OUR HOMES, WE LIVE WITH THEM, AND WE FEED OUR LOVED ONES WITH THEM."

The reason that I like social media as the platform where most of my audience lives, is that it is interactive. There are many parts of the art world and many parts of the ceramics world which feel deliberately gate-kept. If you ask a typical ceramic artist what glaze or clay body they are using, it is very normal for that person not to want to share that, which seems a little crazy to me. It’s really strange to me to see those artists being secretive. I don’t think knowledge should be treated as a commodity, it should be shared. I really appreciate that Instagram allows me to have these one-on-one conversations with people, and I’ve tried to make a habit of answering any questions that I get.

DY: Have your trips to the Asian grocery store changed since you started making these sculptures? Do you look at items differently now that they are the subject matter for your art?

SS: Even before the pandemic, this project was making me think about how intimate groceries are—they’re something that we bring into our homes, we live with them, and we feed our loved ones with them. I have thought a lot about our relationship to food and our relationship to groceries and grocery stories.

DY: What has the non-Asian reaction to your work been like?

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work, I’m open to that. It’s very important for me to use my work to raise money for the cause that I care about. Every year, I do at least one large fundraiser focusing on a different marginalised community dealing with instability at home— more often than not, they have been related to prison and the carceral state. I think that’s one way to counterbalance my own participation in these fucked up systems, but I also feel like there’s no way that one person can fix this system anyway.

I also spend more time looking at labels now. Like Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Sauce, that’s an oyster sauce that I’ve been using my whole life, and I had never really looked at the label and actually examined the scene before. It’s a mother and son fishing for these giant oysters that are the size of the kid. I had never looked at that so closely before.

DY: So you’ve said that you want this project to culminate in an actual grocery store installation. What’s your vision for that? Has there been any progress on it?

DY: The art world is a complicated place and you’re a relative new to it all — how has it been navigating everything so far?

SS: I think that is still something I'd like to do, but I’ve been very lucky to have a lot of other projects and opportunities that have come up since then. I think I’ve been able to split the difference, which is when galleries ask me to do white box installations, I’ve instead had the galleries build pedestals that actually look like furniture. So instead of just a white rectangular cube, it has a lip on it and maybe some false doors that makes it look like a kitchen counter.

SS: I feel like I can't really speak to the art world because I still feel like an outsider. I don’t really interact with the rest of the art world, I don’t have a fine arts background, I’m self-taught. The success I’ve had is completely born from social media. I’ve worked with a number of galleries and the American Museum of Ceramic Arts, but they all contacted me through Instagram. So I feel like I’m navigating an art world that is still very opaque to me.

DY: There are only so many items in the Asian grocery stores, and I saw that you’ve already paused requests for Yakult bottles. How do you see your work developing after this project?

DY: As an outsider to the art world, how much do you value institutional recognition?

SS: I think institutional success would be nice because I have the capitalist brain worms that we all have. But I think my goal, honestly, is just to be able to make a living. I have this opportunity where my art is my work and it pays my bills.

That’s all I could ask for. I am aware that it could dry up any day and I feel somewhat mentally prepared for that. I try to be pretty pragmatic about it. My mom is a finance professor, so she has instilled in me a lot of pragmatism about my career. But I think my goal is just to be able to survive.

SS: My politics have always been a really important part of my life. Food is political, so my politics are already integrated into my art, but going forward, I am interested in making work that speaks to my political views a bit more.

I made this piece called The Pandemic Survival Kit before all the uprisings related to George Floyd, back when we were still in deep quarantine and our main concern was just the virus. I made a Purell, a hand soap, a facemask, and then the fourth object was Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

DY: In my experience, Asian immigrants have this tenuous relationship with art where they want their kids to learn it but never pursue it as a career. It seems like there are a lot of Asian-American kids interested in art but not a lot of Asian-American artists. What is your understanding of the Asian-American relationship with art?

I want to think about politics in my work a little bit more. My politics have evolved throughout my life and continue to evolve as I get more involved in activism and organizing. I’m excited to bridge that gap with my art.

"MY POLITICS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A REALLY IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE. FOOD IS POLITICAL, SO MY POLITICS ARE ALREADY INTEGRATED INTO MY ART, BUT GOING FORWARD, I AM INTERESTED IN MAKING WORK THAT SPEAKS TO MY POLITICAL VIEWS A BIT MORE."

SS: The Asian-American diaspora contains multitudes. I think you and I come from a similar slice of it, which is also the slice that Subtle Asian Traits is attempting to talk to: this professional class, upwardly mobile, relatively affluent slice.

But in New York, Asian-Americans are the group that lives most below the poverty line. So I’m hesitant to say that there’s one Asian-American relationship to art because the diaspora contains such multitudes—and that’s something that, in my practice, I have to push myself to actively learn more about.

I know what my experience is, but there are many other experiences. My parents came over as immigrants for grad school and then stayed for work, but there are many AsianAmerican refugees, there are many Asian-Americans that live below the poverty line, like in New York’s Chinatown.

And so, I don’t think there is one way that we engage with art.

DY: Considering your socio-political stances, how do you grapple with the rampant capitalism of the art market?

SS: There’s a webcomic where it says “you criticize society, yet you participate in a society.” So I think it’s a systematic issue that any single artist can’t fix. If the wealthy are going to redistribute their capital by paying me money for my

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In my practice and research, I have found a much richer history of Asian-Americans than I ever knew existed.

There’s a textbook called Asian-American Art that starts in the year 1900. There’s a long lineage of Asian artists in American that I didn’t grow up learning about. I had kind of assumed that we had not pursued a lot of art in the States, but that isn’t the case. Part of my journey has been to think more about the Asian American experiences which are not from my splice of the diaspora.

DY: Do you think there’s any advantage to not pursuing the traditional fine art path?

"BUT AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, THE ART WORLD IS CHANGING FOR ALL ARTISTS. GALLERIES ARE BECOMING LESS IMPORTANT AS GATEKEEPERS BECAUSE SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEMOCRATIZING THINGS, AND THE INTERNET IN GENERAL ALLOWS ARTISTS TO REACH OR FIND THEIR AUDIENCE WITHOUT THE HELP OF “TASTEMAKERS.”" SS: Again, I can't really speak to what the art world is or isn't since I still feel like an outsider to it. But as far as I can tell, the art world is changing for all artists. Galleries are becoming less important as gatekeepers because social media is democratizing things, and the internet in general allows artists to reach or find their audience without the help of “tastemakers.” There’s an artist and art critic named Brett Shomo who speaks a lot about how this traditional hierarchy of galleries and institutions is breaking down and how artists would even pursue it, because so few people make it to the top and that for you to pursue it—not making your art and not thinking about what you want to make, and just trying to make what will get you into the galleries—is for you to waste your time.

DY: With your work so far, I see a lot of connection to ideas of home and memory. But as your work changes and deals with more current political issues, do you see your work retaining its connection to the past, or will it be more forward looking?

SS: That's an interesting question. I'm not really sure. I think this project, the grocery store, still has a lot in it, so I haven’t thought too far ahead about what my work will become. I see changes as creeping in from the side, where I’m like “oh, I really want to make this Pandemic Survival Kit.” But yeah, I don’t think I know the answer to that.

PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of Stephanie Shih WRITING Dani Yan

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27708 FORM sat down with Duke freshman, Jada Purkett, Patrick Meyer, Bea De Oliveira and Juliette Clark to ask about their experiences entering college in a pandemic. Forced to live in singles, they are embroiled in their own isolation.

Their dorm rooms are their safety, their captivity, their connection to home, no matter how far that might be.

PHOTOGRAPHY Jackson Muraika WRITING Becca Schneid

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“A normal day for me: I’m in my room for most of the day, especially during the week. Sometimes I’ll hang out with friends outside, or study outside, because it’s so easy to get distracted in here. Since I’m doing everything in the same place, there’s no separation, and it can get suffocating. Everyone is just living and working through the same messed up situation.”

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“I’m very much not a homebody. I camp a lot, and I love to go outside and distract myself so I was kind of nervous about the way that things could go down this semester. But the outside is really important for my mental health, so I take runs three or four times a week to create separation between me and my room.”

- Bea De Olivera

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“I definitely got more sentimental during college especially since all of my friends and I were going to different schools. Stuffed animals and toys used to seem pretty unnecessary but I guess it felt meaningful now, so when my friend from home got this for me for Christmas, I kept it. Most of my decorations here are gifts from friends.”

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“There was a period during exams where I just wasn’t leaving my dorm because I didn’t have to. So my friend two doors down gave me a little care package with some encouraging notes. She’s the one who tries to get me to leave my dorm and go outside. If I’m feeling down I just look at that.”

- Jada Purkett

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“My dorm feels like a cave in a lot of ways. There’s not enough light, and because of the circumstances that made first-years have to spend so much time in our room, it felt like I was in my own world, but maybe not in a good way. It’s hard knowing that this is the only place you feel safe.”

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“All my decorations mean a lot to me. My favorite is probably that “I won’t apologize” drawing that my best friend since I was 14 drew me for my birthday. Since the summer before my senior year, I stopped shaving as a statement and to challenge myself. It reminds me of her, who's probably my oldest friend that I still talk to almost every day and supports me.

- Juliette Clark

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“Since we all have singles, I definitely didn’t have enough decorations for my whole room. I basically decorated using a bunch of random things I have to make it feel mine. I took a gap year in Switzerland, and my friend made a drawing for me there, so I put that up. They also have these stacks of newspapers at my friend’s apartment building, so I just decided to rip some out and use the pages.”

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“I met a lot of my friends playing football. It’s my way of getting out of my room, and we go to these little football courts off campus. If the pandemic wasn’t a thing, I would probably be doing intramural football or rugby, but at least I can still do this when I can.”

- Patrick Meyer

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CHEF RICKY Saltbox Seafood Joint is a beloved Durham source of delicious seafood meals, modeled after the classic seafood shack. Started in 2012 by Chef Ricky Moore, a North Carolina native, Saltbox offers selections of finely-cultivated seafood dishes, thoughtfully executed through perspectives of history, experience, and culture. The care put into the food is apparent with every story and experience Chef Ricky brings to the table, from his time in the army, to his family memories. His success has been undeniable, with Saltbox enjoying growing demand and constant local appreciation at its two Durham locations. Now, the brand provides two locations in Durham, FORM sat down with Chef Ricky Moore to talk about the conceptualization of Saltbox, his culinary process, and his upcoming goals for the joint.

Saltbox Seafood Joint 608 N Mangum Street Durham, NC 27701

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Mindy Wu: Could give me a little bit of background on where you grew up and how you got to where you are now?

we still had a chicken coop where we went to go get eggs.

And those beautiful little organic, light blue-tinged eggs — that was normal stuff. I thought it was weird. I thought the white ones were better just because of the perception. Like, why do we get these eggs that are irregular? They don’t look right, you know.

Ricky Moore: My name is Ricky Moore. I'm the owner of Saltbox Seafood Joint, which is located in Durham. Its original location is 608 Mangum Street. I'm originally from New Bern, North Carolina. There's a highway called Highway 7, and my family is from that area of North Carolina — you can define it as Eastern or coastal.

MW: You mentioned that you originally wanted to be an artist, and then you spent some time in Europe. What led you to diverge from originally wanting to be an artist and actually starting your business?

I didn’t think I was going to be a cook, that was not my plan. All through high school, I was going to be an artist.

I got a scholarship to East Carolina University, and I decided that I wasn't mature enough to go to school. I didn't think I was gonna be successful enough, so I joined the military. I grew up an army brat, so I spent time in Germany, Korea, and England. Then, I came back to the States and lived in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.

RM: It was sort of a natural thing. There’s creativity in cooking, obviously. You know, it’s called “culinary arts.” The idea of being a craftsman with food. There's the home cook, and there's the chef, you know, who happens to cook. It's the culinary art point of view, the creativity, the presentation. The colors, the textures. It was a natural progression to essentially changing mediums.

MW: I've never really lived on the coast, but it seems like seafood would definitely be a big part of coastal culture. Do you have any childhood experiences or memories related to that?

I joined the military and I was really gung-ho. This was in Europe. And I was always athletic, so I ran track. And I was 82nd airborne, infantry. Then I decided I want to work in the kitchen. I was responsible to a general, and we used to go out to lunch all the time. And he went to these pretty fine dining sort of places. This French guy who was pretty short, and he had a really tall hat — this guy was very commanding in his kitchen, so, having been in the military, I can identify with that. He was creative, so I was like, I want to try to pursue this. And that's what I did. I started off in a military kitchen, where you don't learn presentation or real visual creativity, but you get a foundation of organization. After that, I really started to study and understand what it means to be a professional chef. I was not going to make the military my career — that was just a stepping stone to where I wanted to go.

RM: Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my elders, my grandparents. We weren't a commercial fishermen family at all. It was something that you did to put supper on the table.

It was very primitive — no special gear. We would have a bamboo pole with a line on it and bait, that’s it. Or, if we went crabbing, we would have some butcher's twine or string with either a chicken leg or a chicken back or a fish head. That's how we would catch crabs — very simple, very straightforward.

Trying to fish was a big deal. We never had anything that was filet. Everything was always whole and had plenty of bones in it. We would go crabbing, and traditionally, you would see them steamed. We fried ours, in a thin pancake-esque batter pretending to be a heavy tempura. They were never steamed.

The army used to compete with civilian chefs in a culinary competition, and I joined that team. We traveled around, and we competed against some of the most affluent French chefs in the world. And that experience opened me up to a whole new set of thought processes. As a creative person, I connected with that straight away. I said, when I get out of the military, I'm going to pursue this. I wanted to be in highbrow fine dining. I didn't want to do anything else. I was lucky to have people around me who guided and coached me in where to go.

But fishing was always something that we did, stuff like floundering, like going out with a primitive sort of stick with a line on the end of it. You would walk on the shore when it was low tide, maybe 200 yards out, and you would have a lantern. Just before the sun goes down, you walk out and you can see the flounder sitting at the bottom of the floor there, and you would gig ‘em, right below the eyes. You wouldn't mess the meat up. My cousins and I used to do that all the time. We were like pre-Jacques Cousteau outdoors kids.

We would take bamboo and make bow-and-arrows out of it. But from a coastal standpoint, we had things that were not mainstream. And frankly, a lot of what I serve now is still not mainstream. It's very native and indigenous seafood.

Before I got out of the military, the Chief Warrant Officer (who was in charge of all the dining facilities) said, I recommend that you go to this school. I said, what school?

He said, the Culinary Institute of America. It's the premier cooking school and hospitality school for chefs. I used my GI bill to go to school, and that was a two-year program at a time. It was fantastic. It was invaluable. It was all of what I needed to see. Because for a time when I was cooking, I didn't know the how and the why of things, the chemistry of cooking. Why do you add baking soda to the water to do this? What is the leveling? What makes this bread

I didn't know I was gonna be a cook. I had really good cooks in the family, so I grew up eating a lot of “country rules” sort of cooking — things that were grown and harvested, and preserved and cured. I was 16 years old, and

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rise? I did the activity, but I didn't know why, so it was a very invaluable experience. Two-year program, graduated honors, and then I started my career in Washington, DC.

all of a sudden we just got slammed. People would wait for an hour. They knew I was the only one in there cooking, so people were patient. After two years, I paid off all my debts.

Now typically, one would buy a food truck first and then go to the brick and mortar restaurant. I did the exact opposite because there were a lot of people who wanted me to cater.

The business model was profitable because I understood the dynamics of a restaurant. I took lessons from that Singapore trip and understood that if I could just produce delicious food out of here, cooked to order, freshly done, and add this local component to it, it would be successful.

Georgie Stammer: What led you to open your first location in Durham?

RM: All of my experience was highbrow fine dining, but when I opened my own business, I didn't want to do that, because I knew the cost that goes along with opening fine dining. I wanted to start simple, and my inspiration was a trip to Singapore. When I went to Singapore, I saw open air markets— Hawker stalls. In each one of these stalls, you got maybe two or three people doing wonderful little dishes. So I spent maybe a month there researching, and I came back to say that's what I want to do. I didn’t want a big restaurant with a bar and waiters. I just wanted to cook something simple.

MW: As Saltbox is becoming more and more popular, how has it retained your original culture surrounding food and your childhood experiences?

RM: That was just always in front of mind as I grew the business. How do I maintain authenticity? That's my reason for keeping the concept simple, uncompromised, not complicated. Now I work in the kitchen every once in a while. The first five years, I was there every day. Nobody else would cook but me. What I needed to do was streamline the business so that I could scale it. I had to define all of my recipes, define all of what I do, so I could hire a person and tell them to do A, B, C, and D. The simplicity allows me to maintain a level of authenticity. I want Saltbox to be brand forward, not Chef Ricky forward. I'm not a one hit wonder— I have other things I want to do. I've been open for nine years. The testimony of a successful restaurant, a lot of times, is that if you stay open for 10 years, you’re good to go. I guess even through a pandemic now.

In 2008, I started to plan this, the concept, the business plan, all that sort of thing. I finally got it nailed down.

Logo, color palette, what I wasn't going to do, the brand promise, all of that. In 2012, I decided that I was going to do something small and easy and straightforward. I didn't want any investors. The inspiration for the concept was growing up in eastern North Carolina. There were seafood restaurants in the market already, but I believe there was a quality component that was missing, as well as a sense of authenticity. There are a lot of places cooking things that are pedestrian and not quality-driven. For me, as a chef with all this training, I wanted to apply everything I know to a simple concept that hopefully fed the masses.

In the beginning, it was hard because I needed to find a specific location. I saw this small place on the side of the road— it used to be an old hot dog and hamburger space.

Somebody was always serving food out of it. I went and asked, “Hey, who owns this building?” For two weeks, I watched the location, morning, noon and night. And they were pissed that I asked them, but I was just curious because I never saw them do anything. They didn't come to work and make any money, they came to work to hang out. I went straight to the landlord and said, “I'd like to rent the space.” He said, “Will you pay the rent?” I said, “Absolutely,” and that's how I got started. My business plan was already in place, everything was already in order. And I didn't have any investors, I wanted to do it all myself. I didn't have any employees. I built a shed in the back and everything. At that point in my career, I had proven that I could run a business and be the chef at big restaurants and hotels. But I’ve never been the person who wrote the checks, and that's a huge burden when there's nobody else to blame if things go wrong.

GS: How do you view food as both an individual and a social experience?

RM: For me, food is the vehicle through which to bond together, to create memories, to engage in conversation, to celebrate. As a person who is in love with the activity of cooking, it's a pleasure to be able to have talent to produce something with your hands, and to have a clear understanding of how to do that. I like to use the term sure-handedness. If you cook somebody something, they want to experience it again. That is the most intimate relationship one could have— being able to make something so delicious that people want to come back.

MW: I love that perspective. Going along those lines, what are your goals and aspirations for Saltbox in the coming years?

RM: The goal is to have Saltbox be a regional brand, particularly scaled across the state, maybe outside of the state. But the immediate goal is scaling to major cities in North Carolina. My aspirations are fairly defined, but they're always a work in progress. I never want to solidify it. I don't want to sound like I'm indecisive, or like I'm not clear about my goals, but I want to keep myself extremely

In terms of the menu, it was all about simplicity. I didn't want to complicate it. The first three months, I worked by myself. After three months, I hired somebody—one cashier.

A year went by. We started to get a little traction, people started coming, there was a lot of press out there. And then

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flexible. The goal is to scale, but it all depends on what's happening at the time. I want to have a bonafide presence.

That could mean doing something homegrown in North Carolina and somebody from San Francisco saying, “Wow, that can be put in San Francisco.”

RM: Whatever you choose to do, I believe it's a requirement to spend time validating your abilities in it and your skill set. Validate your ability to execute your vision. You have to have a plan. Even if you don’t follow it to the letter at all time, the plan has to be laid out and organized, so that you have a pathway along which to move. Passion is necessary, but not required. You just need to be a hard worker, and to know that you have to get to the finish line. I used that analogy for myself because I used to run track. You have to run straight to the tape. You can't be looking to the side because somebody will run right past you. And you have to be able to embrace failure. Embrace the idea that you could fail, and it's alright. Failure means that you’re trying.

GS: Talking more about culinary experience— how do you see food and the culinary experience relating to memory?

RM: Everybody will say “Man, where I grew up...” or they'll say, “My mother made me...” Everybody has a culinary DNA. You grew up eating certain things. Somebody in your household or somebody around you made something that was so delicious that you always use it as a reference point. Food memory. It’s in the back of your mind, lies dormant until you evolve or grow up, and then all of a sudden, it harkens back to you— this tastes similar.

MW: One last question. I was wondering if there is a specific memory that stands out to you over the years of leading Saltbox that you want to remember as you keep progressing with the business.

MW: Is there a particular dish that brings up a memory for you or a vivid experience?

RM: I was an apprentice coming into the business, so Saltbox was my apprenticeship to entrepreneurship. All of my energy came from my gut. I knew I made good decisions, I knew it was going to work out, I just had to put the work in. That was such a huge, meaningful time of rebirth because it was all me. Embrace failure, but don't be afraid to succeed. I was a paratrooper. When you jump out of planes, the goal is to hit the ground safely, but you have to make sure your parachute is packed correctly. I knew that my chute was packed correctly after 20 years of being in the business. I was ready to jump. And that was it.

RM: My father's mother used to make a sweet potato pudding, and let me tell you something; it was so good that I used to defy her. She used to make it on Saturday to be served on Sunday, but I would always get up in the middle of the night and dig into it, and then try to patch it back together. The way she put it together was always delicious. I never got the recipe. She knew I was doing it, too. I couldn’t patch it up! I spread it, and it was uneven. But every time I have some sort of sweet potato preparation, that's the measure. Some people overdo it with cinnamon, overdo it with nutmeg, overdo it with all this brown spice, and they don’t find that balance between the sweet potato and sugar.

Photography Sofia Zymnis Writing Mindy Wu & Georgie Stammer

MW: You talked about how food is almost like a cultural DNA, and also about your time in Europe. How do you think your food DNA has changed over the years? How do you think that part of you has grown?

RM: I'm a very adventurous eater. Part of being a chef is that you have to eat different things just to learn, just to be educated. I enjoy Lebanese food. For some reason I have an affinity for that. I love the idea of meat being skewered and cooked over an open flame. It’s spiced, it’s seasoned, it’s marinaded. Served with rice and freshly made bread. A lot of the garnishes or accoutrements that go along with it are braised things, stewed things.

I've been married for 30 years. My wife and I met in Hawaii.

I was exposed to the idea of eating Native Hawaiian dishes, or your typical street food, like Kalua pig. I'm from Eastern North Carolina, I grew up with a whole hog barbecued.

Same thing — cook it in the pit — so there was a connection.

GS: What is a piece of advice that you would give to someone who wants to follow their passion or start their own business?

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STANDING, STILL

Standing, Still I do not remember my first trip to Wildwood, New Jersey. Like most early childhood experiences, my family’s summer trips there lie distorted and disjointed, connected only by the thin threads I can grasp.

One day playing around the waterpark, the next spent lounging at the beach, all colored by the bright, irresistible pull of Wildwood’s childlike indulgence. And yet, I remember so little of it. The years before I discovered photography were the years before I could capture what made Wildwood so wonderful — before I could make it my own.

Wildwood began as a town of escape for middle-class families, its motels strewn on every street, bustling with people in the summertime.

At its height in the 1950s through the 1960s, the town embodied what it’s known for today: a resort haven of over 300 “Doo Wop” hotels, transporting these families to the exotic places for which they were named: the Caribbean, the tropics, and the Mediterranean. The motels lining the five-mile island were modern in their architectural design, but adorned with beloved, cheeky decorations. This unmistakable style is what draws me and thousands others back to Wildwood each year. The flashy neon lights, kidney-shaped pools, asymmetrical design elements and a plethora of plastic palm trees aestheticize escapism at its most pure.

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Over the past twenty years, though, an estimated 300 mid-century modern structures have been torn down. While this process has slowed in recent years, the number of classic Doo-Wop buildings is steadily declining. Multiple photographers, including me, have traveled back to the setting of their childhood summers to capture the unique emotions of the city.

I was determined to return to Wildwood to capture memories of those families, like mine, that spent summers in Wildwood many decades before. As I returned years later with a camera in my hand, my perspective on the town had changed drastically. To me, Wildwood was no longer just another New Jersey beach. It was the motels, the brick-and-mortar subjects of my portraits. It was the megapixels in my photographs. It moved me, the way its skyline is a living reminder of another era — a history of people and families I’ve never even met, their adventures staggered through summers, their evidence in faded pool chairs and eroding stucco façades.

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I was reminded of one of the principle roles of photography: preservation.

Even after these motels are inevitably bought out and torn down in place of more lucrative commercial developments, their figures will be imprinted in the confines of developed film. Wildwood will not remain the same, nor is it an idealized, rose-colored paradise. More than sixty years since the erection of the inaugural art-deco motel, time moves on, and so does Wildwood’s landscape. Reality is often lost in romanticization.

The motels, their visitors, and the town as a whole all have flaws, but their beauty is seen alongside their imperfections— not in spite of them.

Still, art is a catalyst to connection. Not everyone has been to Wildwood, but almost everyone has a Wildwood. A place so synonymous with childhood freedom and simplicity, before the world grew too complex to hold in the frame of a photograph. A place immersive as a photograph in its own small ways, charmingly stagnant in its romanticization of decades I never experienced or saw. In wading through the streets of Wildwood, I recognized that it was not just one hotel or beach that emmenated these feelings more than any others. It’s the entire village of quirky buildings strung together, a sum of their parts, made bolder by their differences and fastened together by their similarities.

PHOTOGRAPHY Jackson Muraika WRITING Jackson Muraika & Becca Schneid

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