The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

A very good friend of mine, Charles, has just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of end-stage cancer. Charles is like my little brother. He is only 26 years old. Unbelievably, we spoke perhaps a little more than a week ago about him moving to Philadelphia to stay with me. I am in shock, to say the least. So please, keep him in your prayers, du’ah, thoughts and all.

In 2004, I took a long road trip/vacation and drove from Madison, Wisconsin, to Monterrey in Mexico. It was an incredibly long drive that took over four days of long, serious driving [though we did stop for a couple of days in St. Louis to visit a friend’s family] to reach our destination. I love road trips [I have driven from coast to coast a couple of times now]. I like being out on the road with the wind in your hair just observing what flies by you. It’s as if time becomes modal. You catch so much more than when you fly. The city of Monterrey itself was not terribly remarkable, though the food was fairly decent. The most striking aspect were the ring of mountains [Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range] that surround the city [as a side note - one of the names of Monterrey is Sultana del Norte. Really shows how much of an influence Islam/Arabic language had on the Spanish language. I wonder of the US government knows there’s a sultanate in their backyard?]. It was nice to visit a part of Mexico that was not a tourist location. The people were fairly nice [known as regios] and if I had the chance I’d return, though I’d like to spend more time in the mountains. This is the scene of a church that sits in the foothills of the San Pedro mountains. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Kodak T-Max 100 ISO. Hand-held.

Retrospective?

Before leaving Madison I happened to meet a woman named Sarah. She worked as a waitress at a restaurant I used to frequent and asked if she’d be willing to do a casting shoot. I wound up doing a few more shoots with her, her sister and her mother before she went off to Senegal with the Peace Corps. Here’s an early outtake image. Canon 10D, 100 ISO. Studio strobe.

Retrospective?

If we had any sense in our heads,

Wouldn’t we know the Truth,
instead of going around looking for it?

How otherwise would we, as they say,
be able to drink a glass of water?

john cage [1966]

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the “outsider.” Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American.

Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many European immigrants learned when they got off the boat was the term “nigger” - it made them feel instantly American. But this is tricky magic. Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negroes not only raised doubts about the white man’s value system but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black.

ralph ellison [1970]

Titus is one of my best friends and probably the closest thing I have to a mentor in photographic terms. I met him by chance while attending photography school in Michigan. He had been invited by my instructor to come and speak to our class. I was really impressed by his work and after his demonstration we struck up a conversation that’s still going till this day. On this occasion, Titus and I met up in Chicago, as I was living in Madison by this point, and we went down to cover the anti-Iraq War protests. Titus mainly shot video of the event and I covered it with my camera. I remember the day vividly as the energy was pretty high amongst the speakers and protesters. I really enjoy shooting these kinds of events as it’s more documentary in feel and you have a chance to interact a bit with the subjects you’re shooting. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Fuji Across 100 ISO [I loved this film!]. Hand-held, available light.

Retrospective?

I keep wondering when Blackamerica is going to take stock. More and more, I see in my fellow young, black males, levels of aggression and intollerance that baffle my mind. Gun violence. Gang violence and even for those not associated with gang violence, the misplaced reverence that so much of pop-black-culture has on it. What, you may ask, is this reverence? In Philadelphia, one need not venture far to see the signs. Scarface T-shirts being sold on the corner or out of someone’s car in South Philadelphia. Grown men walking around in Biggie and Tupac T-shirts with fake bullet holes in them. And then of course, the glorifying of violence in the pop culture through acts of hyper-masculinity. How else could you explain Michael Vick’s behavior? In a discussion with a white associate, he expressed his dismay over Vick’s behavior [and rightly so] in his role in dog fighting. “He’s got it all, you know. Fame. Money. How could someone like that just f#ck that up?” I shook my head and replied, “manhood”. My associate looked quizzically back at me and said, “Manhood? What’s that got to do with it?” I chuckled, wryly, and continued, “it’s a black thing, man. You wouldn’t understand”.

At the risk of dabbling in pan-Islamic rhetoric, this, in my opinion, is one of the greatest things the Prophet brought with his Message. Beyond no god but God, the Prophet also brought about a new modality of manhood, one where you could fully be a proud, protective, strong character and yet it tamed the domineering, bombastic and even violent tendencies that were prevalent in the society he lived in during 7th Century Arabia. It is here that his Sunnah has so much potential for Blackamericans [though not exclusively] to address and resolve the pertinent issues of our time: Hyper Black Masculinity.

I cannot lay claim to the term, hyper masculinity, in reference to Blackamericans. As usual, it was a term I heard coined by Dr. Sherman Jackson. In a talk that Dr. Jackson gave last year at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jackson urged Blackamerica to deal with three things: education, economics, and sex. And he tied all of these together in a talk that addressed the state of Islam in the Blackamerican community to the malfeasants on black males and their overt masculinity. Dr. Jackson drove home his points by illustrating that the Prophet, as our example, was a man who was never seen as a coward, though he was never full of bravado. He was never perceived to be a “punk” or a “chump”, even by his enemies. The Quraysh had many things to say about the son of Abdullah, but a coward or a chump was never one of them. I need not spend time here reiterating the blessed characteristics of the Messenger - he was kind, caring, compassionate, thoughtful and so on. Yes, we know them but we do not implement them. A recent case drove this home for me:

I was photographing a group of imams and when it came time for the group picture I placed the women in front, seated in chairs. This was done mainly out of photographic needs. But like clockwork, one of the imams boisterously raised his objections to have women siting in front of him.

“Akhiy, these are women and we are men! How can we be protectors and leaders of our community when we place our women in front of us? No, no! We have to have them get behind us.”

“If we have them ‘get behind us’ they won’t be in the picture. Can’t you be a man and stand in the back? No one here seems to be challenging your authority or place as a ‘man’. Need you be a tyrant to show it?”

Needless to say, I’ve had a few issues with this person before and I took this opportunity to stick it to him a bit but this is typical of the reaction of many Muslim men - and yes, the imam was Blackamerican. Instead of addressing real topics and real issues and standing up and dealing with those “like a man” we instead take our misplaced pride and break the proverbial stick over our leg so all can see how manly we are. So I make this plea, this cry to my fellow brothers [and sisters, as they will certainly be a part of this] regardless of religious affiliation, to look at, contemplate and rethink our approach to manhood and to be a man where it counts, to make the change.

Through my middle brother, who is a professional musician, I have come to know many other musicians here in the Philadelphia area. I’ve known Tom Tallitsch for quite some time now, as he’s played with my brother for many years. Tom is a jazz saxophonist and jazz educator here in the NJ/Philadelphia area. He was putting together a new media kit for his new disc, Duality [see iTunes], and wanted me to photograph him for it. It was a simple session I did in my place with a couple of strobes. Canon 10D. ISO 100. Hand-held with studio strobe.

Retrospective?