"It is about race and being African American, but it's also about gender - and there are just so many women who either should be given more credit or have more vibrant careers for having paved the way. It's a little bittersweet. Things should be better. But then, that's just where we are."
"A photograph is worth a thousand words, but then it can be very specific or open-ended, without leaving it completely open to interpretation - just a little bit of a narrative in a particular direction."
"When you make a work and that work becomes embraced, regardless of who it's embraced by, and it's used intellectually to support a particular agenda, it provokes a level of discomfort."
"In terms of making art, and writing, and anything that we do as artists where we have to step up to the plate, it should be uncomfortable, it should be nerve wracking, and there should be this level of the unknown."
"Real is a contentious word. What can be considered real and or verified does not necessarily mean that it is recognized or acknowledged on a micro or macro level. There are many different ways to interrogate or locate a subject. One should take into account the lens by which we think of the idea of a subject."
"I focus on details, either of the body, or of objects that represent gender, sexuality, and other themes."
"The construction of femininity is a construction, yes, but also it can be twisted and turned around in such a way that doesn't necessarily mean it is pointing to the female body or male body in such a binary fashion. The culture is already there and has always been, but not as equal citizens. I think there is more progress to come."
"In my work, there's mechanism that is 'real,' which is formed from the historical concepts of the images that I'm working with. That doesn't fall completely into a cliché. There are elements about it that carry historical context and edges."
"Reading about feminism when I was a teenager and seeing it as a young woman, I realized that feminism really hadn't dealt with sexuality; it really hadn't dealt with transgender or gay women."
"I started to concentrate more upon how the viewer looks at photographs... I would insert my own text or my own specific reading of the image to give the viewer something they might not interpret or surmise, due to their educated way of looking at images, and reading them for their emotional, psychological, and/or sociological values. So, I would start to interject these things that the photograph would not speak of and that I felt needed to be revealed, but that couldn't be revealed from just looking at an image."
"Generally, the imagery and the text go hand in hand. It's much easier when the text comes first, but sometimes I need visual stimulation in order to find the words. I get an idea of what I want when I begin to shoot, and the text is usually the last thing to be resolved. I tend to leave the text open, and I refine the words up to the last minute. As for the image, I can resolve that and get that done fairly quickly."
"My earlier works from the eighties and mid-nineties are very narrative based. But even more recently, the work has an undercurrent of the narrative of the archive, of found photographs, implied narratives, and fictions."
"All artists have different relationships to their work. But mine is out in the world, I barely hold on to it - I don't have an emotional attachment to it. It's something I have to move on from and do other things. At the same time, when I look back at the work I've done, it becomes a language for me. There is different visual iconic imagery or things that I can re-examine in different ways. It's quite multifaceted and beautiful."
"Working in film and video is a high for me. As a process, it's like jet fuel."
"If you are not Native American and your people haven't been here for centuries before the settlement of America, then those experiences have to be regarded as valuable, and we have to acknowledge each other. This is the premise by which I view the world."
