 Alright, good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Neil Romanoski. I'm the Dean of Libraries. And it's really wonderful to welcome you all here for what is our first in-person authors at all in vaccines, I believe, maybe early spring 2020. So it's really wonderful to be here all the time with all of you here today. And I'm really honored and privileged to have Adger Pounds joining us for this conversation about his work and beautiful book. Adger, by 21st edition, is a press. And Adger will be in conversation with Julie Dunermuth, who is the director of the School of Art Plus Design. So really a great conversation today to bring forward to you. A tech note, unfortunately the live stream is not working, so we are going to record the session and make it available on our YouTube channel. And Jen was chatting with people in the waiting room on her live stream to let me know we can do our best, but it is what it is with technology. But so glad she can all be here today. And I do just want to take a moment to thank our Libraries and Events Coordinator, Jen Harvey, for her work on today's event, as well as several other members of our team. Phil Skocik, Robin Wooten, Kevin Kopelkamp, Kay Mason, Mimi Calhoun, Charlie Nick, and Michelle Jennings for all their work on the event. And last but certainly not least, I want to thank and introduce to you all Dr. Miriam Intritor from Armand Sender for Special Collections, who initiated and coordinated Adger's visit today. And I'd like to welcome Miriam to the front of the room to introduce our speakers. Thank you, Ken, for being here. And hello everyone. Thank you so much for being here this afternoon. I'm thrilled and absolutely honored to introduce our guests for today's authors of all time. Julie Demmermuth is a tenured faculty member at Ohio University's College of Fine Arts, School of Art, Coast Design. Her creative research field is in the areas of painting and drawing. Julie has participated in solo exhibitions and group and jury exhibitions in both the United States and abroad. Her research employs painting and drawing as sites for investigation, examining aesthetics of holidays, the psychology of celebrations, and both the questions around our relationship to sites of ornamentation. Most recently she has developed new biomedical arts courses and a new undergraduate certificate in biomedical arts. Julie has been teaching at Ohio University for the last 17 years and is in her sixth year serving as director of the School of Art, Coast Design. Today Julie will be in conversation with Adra Cohen. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Adra Cohen turned down a full music scholarship to Capitol University to become one of the first African-American students to earn a degree in photography from Ohio University. He studied here with Clarence H. White Jr. Cohen then attended the School of Motion Picture Arts and School of Visual Arts in New York City. As the first African-American film still photographer in Hollywood, he photographed over 30 sets alongside directors including Francis Ford Coppola and Spike Lee. In 1958, Cohen's joined Gordon Parks at Life Magazine. As a mentor, Parks encouraged Cohen's to use his camera against racism. While living in New York City during the 1960s, Cohen's became a founding member of the Cohenier Workshop, a rights arts collective who used their talents to undermine racism against black communities. The collective was a driving force in the Black Arts movement. Cohen's photographs and paintings have been shown and collected by the African-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, the International Museum of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Harvard Fine Art Museum, the Detroit Art Institute, James E. Lewis Museum, and the Getty Museum. Cohen's numerous awards include recognition of a distinguished career at the 2001 Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art, a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, the Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks Visiting Scholars Award from Wayne State University, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Brown University. Please join me in very warmly welcoming Julie Demmermuth and Adria Povins. It's just a privilege to be here, and I'm just listening to that list. That's amazing. I don't know who that is. Well, we all want to know who that is. We all want to know about your life and your career, and kind of starting this off, I know Maren said you were here in the 1950s studying photography with Clarence White, Jr., and you were one of the first black students to get a degree in photography. I know you and I have chanted a little bit about this, but what was it like here at Ohio then, at Ohio University? Ohio University was at that time a little country town. Everything was close, everybody knew everybody. There was only one black family in the town, the Saunders, and all the children were very talented. Philip, Ronnie was a teller, so we all were very talented. But it was a real country town in the sense that in walking around outside the University where people had never seen a black person before this in the 1950s, and they looked at me very strange, and somebody asked me where you're from, and I would say I was from Columbus, Ohio. They said, well, you know, are you a foreigner? Lots of different questions. On campus, it was good, you know, and I had a great time. I had great teachers. Clarence White Jr. was terrific. Walter Vialen and many trucks. Well, Walter Vialen was really a good guy. And then Don Roberts was a really unusual character in the way that he taught, but I learned a lot from him. And then there was just a mania in the theater, because I was in the light of the day in the black. But it was a nice campus. I think that year that I got here, there were only 22 black students in my class that came in, I think about 10,000 students that year. And I first lived in what they called the Barracks, because I guess at that time, Ohio University had been a base for the Army, I think. And so I lived first disabled in Chief of the Barracks. And I had a board job, because my parents couldn't afford to pay for the whole tuition, so I had a board job all four years ago. But it was a real home county, a real country. But the knowledge that was here, especially in the photography department, what I mean was very interesting, because Clarence H. White's father, Clarence H. White's senior, had been able to have the artists to show and see this as gallery, and see this as considered the father of modern photography. So he brought a castle, just a lot of different artists. This is about the first time that people would see this kind of work. So he was a real leader in bringing photography to Florida. I mean, when I said that I was going to come to Ohio University to study photography, my father said, why would you want to go study a hobby? It's just a hobby. And photography at that time was considered a hobby, and it wasn't something you did to make your life's living work out of it. To be a photographer was just photographing over the number of lessons for it. Here are the newspapers, stories from magazines. It wasn't really the kind of career that you could make a living from. Because it just wasn't happy. So what was the impact of your time here on your career? My impact? The impact of being here at Ohio University. Well, I think the knowledge that I got here was the impact. I learned a lot, and I kind of actually found myself to a certain degree. Because I was basically lazy. I didn't want to work. I didn't want a job months and a clock. I never wanted a job months and a clock. I had a few of those, but in the summer I would work when I went home, and I would have two or three jobs to make money. I worked with Timothy Goldberg and Company, and then I worked with the American Air Conditioning Factory. So I did two jobs in the main money when I was in school. I think that learning was very important for me here. I was exposed to things I wouldn't have been exposed to. All of my mother was a very educated woman. I knew Paul Armstrong Barr and Paul Robes, things like that, and my mother would read poetry to us and stuff. So I came from a big family. My group was, I would say, a typical American family only guy. That's great. You've got a chance to walk around campus a little bit today, but what do you feel has changed at home? Everything. Everything. Some of the old buildings are still here. The photography building was a big barn, and that's all that was in that building was photography. It wasn't that big. But the information and the knowledge was great. To learn what photography was all about. And I guess what I really learned, and that was later on, was to, I showed my work to people. That was my big secret, to see what they would say about what they saw. And in doing that, I learned about that person. They said, I don't like that, or I like it, or whatever. It gave me a window into their head, and that was around my junior, and that really got me excited about that I could make something that would move somebody to say something about it to me. That meant that I had connected with them for some kind of way. It didn't matter about the color. We had a very good buddy. He was white, his name was Taylor Chan, and we were everywhere on campus. In fact, he helped me get my first life, because he lived in New Jersey, and we hung out, and I was pretty friendly with James Corrales, who became very famous, I'm hearing, he photographed a picture of the march in Cecemo, and so the sun was in the sky, and you see the whole line of people. That's his photograph, and Paul Fusco, he photographed Kennedy, Kennedy trained, and went around, he was on that train, and did a whole lot of that. So they were both graduates from Ohio University, and I think that when we went to New York, and we were hanging out, nobody had the knowledge and information that we had. When I left here, I knew how to take a picture. I went and worked with Gordon in first grade. Do you know how to load holders? I said, sure. So we were in the dark room, and he closed the door, and he gave me four rows, he had about two rows, and they cut the lights, and let me know when you're ready, I said, okay. He says, you may have a lot of noise over there, so I said, yeah, I know what I'm doing. So he took my son out, yeah, yeah, I'm here. Really, he said, after that he never questioned my ability or my knowledge about the dark room, because he realized that I knew what I was doing. Because in those days, if you wanted to be a photographer, you studied with another photographer, and learned from him, and then he would give you some of his clients to get work like that. So you learned, it was all the job training. They were going to any school. Ohio University was the only school that gave an degree. I think Arizona State had a program, but they didn't make new rows. That's good, and they didn't say black, and we don't make new rows. I mean, in those days, they were really bold about whether they would admit you or not. It wasn't like, oh, maybe, or, you know, then after the backfire, everything changed, you know, even before that. But I think that, at the time, OU was the only place that gave a four-year study course, and then later on they added master's. And I felt that the information that I got at Ohio University, you couldn't get anywhere else. You know, Clarence was very thrilled about what he was doing, and he had all that history of students behind him. We didn't have books. There were no books, you know, or any history of photography. But because his father was who he was, he was able to show us prints of Western actual prints. And I think that the first prints that I saw blew me away, they were so three-dimensional, Western's work. We had Ansel Adams. We had Steve's. We had all the guys who had Oregon, all those guys who were well-known at that time. And none of that looks until later on. In fact, it wasn't until Ansel Adams was on the cover of Time Magazine, that was 1979, because he had sold a photograph for $1,500. That's ridiculous. Now you think it was something like that for $50,000. But I think that at that time, nobody really knew how big photography was going to become. I felt lucky to be in the history of all that new before. Yeah, we really blazed your own trail. Yeah. Like, again, you were the first African-American to film still photographer. Can you talk a little bit about how one sustains oneself as a first? How the mentorship? Well, I think that you can learn on your own, but you do have to have some instruction to understand why you can understand chemicals, understand how that works. You can't just have a dizzle camera to take your system. You know, kind of like, dizzle camera to take your system. You know, put it up there. When we started, there were 36 shots in a film camera. That was it. So you had to be very selective about what you were going to shoot and have to think about what it was that you were going to do. You only had 36 shots. Now you have dizzle camera to shoot $5,000. Did I get a good one? You know, whereas in those days, you knew at a certain point that you were going to have a good photograph of this company. So back in 1958, you joined Life Magazine, right? No, I never joined Life Magazine. It really worked at Life Magazine. I did some things for them, but I never joined the staff. I never wanted to be on staff. I never wanted to have a job as a photographer. I wanted to do. I really realized, because Gordon told me, he said, you don't want to work at Life Magazine. We're in the magazines. He said, because you do work and they edit for their policies. And he said, you have a... He said, you... He said, Jerry, I have your point of view. He said, just keep doing what you want. At first, I thought he was going to be here one week. He said, but then, you know, I met more than a sweet who worked every page. And he told me the same thing. He said, do you have your point of view? He said, do you have your point of view? He said, that's great. He said, you should stick with that. He said, it may not come overnight. And it didn't. He said, but he said, you have your point of view. You need to stick with that. He said, don't worry about your name for these magazines, because in school, the idea of being a photojournalist, that was the idea. We like Eugene Smith a lot. We love Eugene Smith. And we like that whole school of instantaneous photography in the street, that type of thing. Being able to capture a real moment in life, and we love that. Doing that, so those were kind of our heroes, you know, that style of photography. Sounds like you had a good mentor in there. Yes. Can you talk a little bit more about that mentorship or relationship? Well, I think that when Gordon saw my work, he realized that I was very serious about what I was doing. So we remained friends throughout this whole life, because when I went to work with him in the live page, and I lived at the house of the family, Gordon Jeniger, maybe I was a year or so old. I mean, we became tight, and we did all the running around with the girl. And Gordon had a swimming pool, so we'd invite girls over there. I'd go swimming. I mean, it was a great, great thing. Oh, yes. So, Gordon, you and I were, you know, and he played guitar, and I played guitar. But he had lessons, and Carl was my twin. So he was really good silence and things for him. So we hung out a lot. But I think that when Gordon, and I got really close after Gordon Jr. was killed in Africa, then, I mean, I used to talk to him every now and then, but after that, and I talked to him sometimes two times a week, writing books and stuff. He would ask my opinion about what he was doing. And then he learned some things from me, too. You know, because I had the latest information about what he was about guitar. I could develop color film, things like that, into a poem. I had knowledge of sea prints and art prints, and that was new at that time. So I had been, you know, knowledge of that. And one of my first jobs after Gordon was working in a color band, making art prints. So I had that information. And then when I got in the movie business, he started asking me, he said, what kind of film did he use? You know, another time. And he did some work like that, too. But I think that he was like my pops. And he was very much like my father, in the sense that he was dedicated to what he was doing. And Gordon was a hard worker. He wasn't, he wasn't slack. He was very... I mean, he would work three o'clock in the morning to get to work with that. Gordon, I never knew anybody that put so much into his work at the time. He was totally dedicated to that. His writings, his photography, his music, all of it, he was, you know, very dedicated. And then you also went on to become a founder, founding member of the Khamungi Workshop. So for those of you who don't know about it, it's an important civil rights art collective, right? That work to subvert the racist stereotypes of the black communities. Can you talk about how that came together and how did it start? Well, it started actually, it was 1961, I had done a picture of Louis Armstrong on the cover of Theater Magazine. They sent me to the Newport Jazz Festival to do these pictures. And Ray, who worked at a camera store in Harlem, he saw the magazine and he said, he said, I didn't know you were black, man. He said, that's a great shot of Louis Armstrong. Then you come up town and help us. And he said, I got a bunch of guys, you know, and they're mostly hamachers. I think Ray was in the kitchen in the camera store and Cleen was in Bellevue. Different guys worked in different jobs. They weren't professional photographers, they were basically hamachers. So I went up and showed them what I knew. And then we started getting together. And then we said, well, if we're going to do this, and my thing was, I didn't want to be part of a group that people knew immediately was black. I was more interested in photography. I mean, the first thing we had was a group of 35. I said, great. They'll know you were black later on. But the first thing they'll know is the quality of the photographs. That's right. But they all wanted to have this thing. Ray and I were both in the boat for it. But then later on, it was good that we had a name. So I would show the guys what I knew, and then what people came, and then we would get together every Sunday. And his wife would make chili. And we'd have chili and wine. Some guys would decorate their head. That's the way it was for years. And the guys began to learn. And then most of them became really new professional photographers. So the show that was put together, called Lou Drake with the Komungi photographers, Lou started writing in 63. He started writing notes in our meetings. Before the meeting, we were writing it down. So they start with 1963, but it started in 1993, taking pictures. But my thing was, in my teaching to the guys, it was, you have to take a really good photograph. I don't care what some black people, purple people, green, white or whatever, you're taking a picture of, it has to have that quality that made it lasting. That was the main thing. And then we decided, since there were so many negative images about us in the media, that we would show that we were beautiful, that we were everything, that any other race of people is. So we kind of dimmed that tide of the negative images. And the show is now, Star Dimension, and then it was at the Whitney, and then it was at Cincinnati, and it was at the Getty. And I talked to the curator last week, and she said, and it's only been up about a month, and she said, the first two weeks, they had $70,000 of people see the show, and they had all kind of comments about it. They didn't know that kind of work existed, and it was a sensitive thing, and a lot of writing was about it. But I think that that was the thing that I felt was important. Even though you're black, but you're still, you know, the artist is not, I do black art, I do art. I just happen to be black. I hate them, and I hate the word African-Americans. Yes, I am African, but I've been to Africa and all that. But the Africans don't consider me a brother in the sense of brotherhood as they look at me as an American, right? You're not African. But now it's beginning to get close because a lot of Africans are beginning to understand, you know, there's a cross over there, especially in hard work. But I think in the beginning of the Kimo Geku, it was very important, you know, and then Roy came in, so I was the first president, the first sort of leader, and he'd done a book with Richard Wright called, Two Black People, Right. And we kind of really loved the work that he did. It was, you know, sort of black people as people. Not any of them were something weird, but the humanity, the humanity was the same as anybody else. So Roy became the first sort of student when we got a reality. So it led up to us finally having this show because Lou Draper's sister had given all of his work to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. And they saw him and said, this is great work. And then they, as they did more and more research, they found that he was part and so they decided to put a show together about the old and saw that. And they've been shows and shows and shows in a bit. So you've got this prestigious, epic career, collections, awards, shows. Can you talk us through a few more of those highlights? What kind of highlights? Where do you start? Well, I mean, I got into the movie business and that was very interesting, the story behind that. I first worked on a movie with Ozzie Davis because he wanted black people behind the camera as well as in front of the camera. And I worked that one job. I got that because I went to C748 and somebody said, you know, go C748, I like guitar, I like to see him. And he looked at my book and looked at my work. He didn't say much, he's very quiet. And he got to one picture and he closed the book and walked out of it. And I sat there for a long time learning. And then his producer, Zola, came in and he said, you know, the picture was still there. And he saw Estani Carroll do a little show where he said he had been engaged to her when they went to a movie Paris movie. And I guess it didn't happen. And he still had some kind of feeling. And I guess because it was a sexy picture of her, he was like, you know, just a little bit. But then Joel told me that there was a guy who was playing with this picture with Ozzie Davis. I didn't know what it was. He said, go over and see this guy. And, you know, I'd been through a lot of changes. I said, yeah, right, go see this guy. I'd get it right. He said, no, no, no, he said, he said, sit down and go call it. He called me right there and said, I got a guy here. He's coming over right away. And I went over to see him. And he said, all right. I said, they do what? I had no idea. So he photographed what he said in the movie. You know, on the sets behind the scenes, the actors and so on and so forth. He said, your work is perfect for the way you shoot. He said, do you have these intimate pictures of people? So that was the first picture that I worked on. And there were two guys working on the film that told me about there was a unit. So I finally got ordered into a unit. And somebody just recently told me that, I think a couple of years ago, another African man on the tower, he said, I've done a research on how many, you know, black photographers in the unit. He said, there's only 12. He said, you were the first one? I said, come on. He said, you were the first one? And it was all analog at that time. And so at some point, you're on board of the digital. Maybe switch from analog to digital. I mean, from the first side, in the beginning, digital was a capital. But as they improved it more and more, then in the beginning, you could do all the same things that you could, especially bringing up highlights and opening up chattels and stuff, the things that you could do digital that you couldn't do. How has that shaped your recent work? Or do you have a favorite camera? All my cameras are favorite cameras. I want to take the best pictures. Well, now I got this guy. Yeah, talking about this. This is the monochrome, the Leica monochrome, bad news camera. This is a very photographer-friendly camera. You don't really have to take your eye out of the camera because you see everything right there. You can adjust the exposure here and here without even taking the camera away. You can look at the here and the eye. When you look at the back, it goes off of the camera. It brings the image on the back. It's really sharp as heck. The images, you take raw, but they should be upside down. That's right. It's my favorite camera. Did you use this in the making of the book as well? No. There are no pictures in the book. All those are negatives and animals. I use an iconic animal, so I like them. I want to turn to the book a little bit. We've got these two amazing editions. There's a trade edition. There's a deluxe edition. Can you talk about your choice to produce both? How did that come about? Why a book now? I didn't have anything to do with it. I'm going to talk about the... Oh, okay. ...and Steve Albihari. I had a book before that. It's called... It's a big book published by Glitterati. That book was the first book of my photographs. I was... That's the first book. I never thought that I would ever have a book. I didn't really care. But that book happened. And then this book happened. And Steve saw the book. He liked the book very much. I was kind of low. He's a stand-off person. Since Guy's kidding me. But then he was very serious. He said, do you trust me? I said, I don't trust you. And then, you know, before he talked about photographs, we were hazing him. And I realized that he had a point of view that he had looked at the thousands and thousands of photographs. So he felt some of my work. And I didn't say he didn't. So we worked, you know, and he said, trust me, I want to do my book with you. He said, if you have these other pictures of artists, you know, he said, I would have to do my version of my trust. We argued a little bit. We were arguing. I said, I don't like that. And he said, it's great for us. I said, I don't like it. He said, let's be honest. I don't want to believe it. There were two photographs that I didn't go under the book that he didn't go under the book. And then there were a couple photographs he wanted that I didn't go under the book. But we, you know, it was a work in progress. You know, but I had left a lot of decisions, you know, about the book to him. But I told him, I said, one thing, I want it for the book. I want all black pages. And I want no words or writing or dates under the photographs. I want those. I want people to experience the work. I said, most of it, the white pages, you look at it and you get it after it. And I said, this book, you go from the Emmys to Tony Blacks, which is a rest. It's like a rest stop for the eyes and for the blue. So he didn't go to the next page. Several pages of it, it's black. But I wanted a book that made people look at the photographs. It's always on the pages, no bird on the tree or a bottle on the table or none of that. I just wanted people to experience the book photographically. Even the writing is dark. But then you have to, if you tilt the book, it's still in white. Then you can see the black writing until you let the light reflect. So that's another dimension of the book. This isn't a book that people go like this. And the writing is a specific font, right? It's in freight and freight stands, and these are typefaces designed by Joshua Darden. And he's the first known African-American type designer. How did that come about? How did... Steve. The process. Steve. And did you have a role in that process or was it all Steve? No. When he did this, he sneakily recorded me talking. One day I said, I said, I said, do you mind? I said, what are you talking about? I said, I'm in the sand. Things you couldn't be friends with. That guy. That's funny. Really, that's stupid, you know? But he cut a lot of that out, and he still maintained my sort of rhythm. And so they made the racial poetry, which was new to me, but I felt it was really great because if you read the white writing, it gives you an idea of what the rest of the words are about. So you can go read that and go back later, read the rest of the story, and then it gives you an idea of who I am as a person. You will never find out who the target is that way, but this gives a picture of who this person is and talking. Plus he gives you the image. So it was different. I didn't know that. So we have both copies. The only difference in the copies is the deluxe edition has two black copies. One platinum print is probably 20 books. So the platinum prints are, we had to make a decision about those two, but I think that platinum is longer lasting than any other process of writing. Even longer lasting than Silverjump. So any platinum salts printed into rag paper, that's something. These ones made by hand. I didn't print them, somebody else printed those. Plus I didn't know what to do with them. But I saw these ones. So how do you envision students interacting with this book? Like either, like how do you see students interacting with your book? Are you doing a classroom or a studio? No, I'm kidding. They look at the book. I mean the other book, Personal Vision, which is about a little writing. There's a lot of writing. This book is a book that you have to live with. If you have one day, look at it, it's not going to get it. So I think in a classroom situation, you could probably discuss each picture of what it means to be a person. What is that about? I need to discuss taking the wadi to that. Because I don't play that information in there. Because I think it's not known. It's only important to curators. They go back and look at all that information. But being a curator, they don't necessarily understand, you know, unless they deal with you on a personal basis. Just reading about somebody on books and pictures of information doesn't really give you the full flavor. And then you've got this book. This book is all words. There's no pictures of this. These are the stories that a friend of mine actually wrote in the book. He had me tell him stories. Because I used to tell him, he's younger. I met him when he was 13 years old. He was, I guess, I was 20 or something. And he used to ask me, well, what do you do with it? And I would tell him these stories. So now he's 17. He said, hey, man, we got a good book. He would tell me these stories over all these years. And at first I wasn't interested. And then he started writing stuff when he showed it to me. I said, it's interesting. I'm still interested. And so I would talk to him right now. So now he wasn't doing that much. So you don't need to have those stories. We're about an 1878. So we're thinking about it. So you collaborated with my first editions. On this book. And you talked a little bit about then making the decisions. Is that sort of how they collaborated? Well, yeah. He said, do you trust me? And I said, yeah, I trust you. So he would show me when he was born and ask me what I thought. And we'd discuss it. One of the ladies over there chose the image of the bush. And she was adamant about it. And I think it's the design job is just fantastic. So I hope you all get a chance to see the copies of the library. I know we have a number of students here as well. So and then you got a chance to be with students today like during lunch. And so I wanted if they were like, what do you thought are the most important things that students in photography should know or need to be thinking about? Well, any student or anything, any person the first thing that you have to work on is your own knowledge and spirit. You have to, it's not outside of you. Your art is not outside of you. It's inside of you. And you have to work to become a human being. And what does that mean? That means you have to understand who you are as a person. You have to find out what is your destiny. What did the creator put you here for? Everybody's life is important. Now, what are you here for? Just taking the space to eat food? You have to realize that there's something that you're here to do. Maybe it's not hard. Maybe art is just a way into something else. But it's very important for you to understand and deal with the energy and power that you have. Because everybody has it. You haven't been taught that. I think that religion, education and politics puts you in a box. You grow up. You learn. You get educated. You go to school. You get out. You get a job. You get a family. You get a grandkids. You get old and then you die. That's not life to me. Life to me is about discovering who I am. Who am I? What are the things in me that's different than anybody else? Is everybody just like a friend that's different? So you have to find out what it is in you that you want to do it. Whether it's hard or anything you have to do. It's inside of you. It's not outside of you. You're taught in this world to go outside of you. This little cell phone means I thought television was bad. I thought television was terrible. I thought television was terrible. But I think that the cell phone has really got everybody. They live their life in the cell phone. Information comes from there. That's not all information that they want. Wikipedia is not the answer to everything. But I think get out, live life. Just travel. Go somewhere you've never gone before. And don't expect something. Just see what's there. Experience life. Don't be angry at anybody. Don't hold on to hate. Realize that we all have to share love. It's very important. And forgive. You didn't make anybody down here on this planet. What right do you have to judge when a thing came in? You don't know anything about it. You know. But you don't. You don't need to know yourself. If you knew yourself, you would be kind and loving to everybody. To the animals, the birds, the trees, everything. You would give the best of yourself. And that's what you should do. And then those things come back to you. If you make space in your life and in your heart for love, it will come to you. If you make space in your heart for hate, that'll come to you too. Love and consciousness will give you what you ask for. It's not what you do, you know, or even what you think. It's how you express this God-given right inside you. And everything out there in the world tells you to go cabinet. Do this. Be a job. Do this. You're all taking your energy away. The job takes your energy away. You do it because you need money. You have your family, etc. But if you look at it realistically, if you apply your energy to your dreams, they would come true. That's how you make dreams come true. When you were little and you wanted a bike or you wanted a birthday or whatever, how much did you think about it? You thought about it every week now. You thought about it. Well, you made a space for that to exist and finally it materialized. And because you are making a space for it, it's true with everything in life. You make a space for it in your life. You say, I want to be in love with someone. I want to do this. Whatever it is you want and it's to the better good of the universe, it will come. The energy will come and help you do what you have to do because your ass can't go up. I mean, it's in the mind. I mean, all this stuff is ancient information. Ask and you shall receive. That's in the mind. It's pretty powerful in life. People believe that. You want some medicine, you want to make some money. It's very simple. If you extend yourself to somebody with how you feel, they feel. And you walk down the street and you want to say, good morning. And you smile. Maybe that person is like, Good morning. And you say, good morning. Good morning. Almost automatically. That makes them feel better. But I don't even know if they feel better because they say good morning. Mr. Rupp. You say, good morning. How are you? Good morning. It takes them on that thing. Think of energy like when you meet people. We all walk around this energy around us today. We don't see it. But we live with energy all around us. What do you mean? Because everything has an energy around it. And you deal with it every day. You make decisions every day. Based on how you feel. What you wear. You meet somebody and they say, How are you? They do your hand like that. I'm mad that you didn't even think about it. But somebody gives you a hand. Yes, you do. You don't like that person. I mean sometimes, you haven't even met a person. They walk in the room. Or they move the service. I don't like that person. Your energy is going. You're done. You don't like the person. But a lot of people don't pay attention to those little things that happen to you. It's always in the details. Life is in the details. To me, everything in my life is in the details. That's pretty powerful. Pretty powerful advice. I want to open it up for some time here for our guests to ask you your questions. If there are any audience members with questions, I can repeat it and get that recorded. Initially when you were out in college. Was that from a technical perspective? Was it both technical and artistic perspective? So I'm going to repeat that just so we get it. You mentioned that you had a leg up in some of your professional practices in terms of like... Was it just technical or technical and from an artistic perspective? Was it from the technical or technical and artistic perspective that gave you a leg up on some of your other colleagues or competitors? It was technically because I learned things in school that you couldn't learn unless you worked with somebody. And even then what you would learn from them wouldn't be how to read a senseicometer. What is a senseicometer? What is the photo lab index? And what does it exist in? But in the photo lab index you had formulas for developing films. It wasn't just D76 or D76. There were other formulas in there. There were other types of papers that talked about what is polarization and how to do it. All these different things how to make different types of prints. So it was a book for photographers. It doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore. So it was more technical. What do you feel like community or collaboration has played for you? I think photography a lot is sort of an individual act What do you feel is an independent work or what do you feel is more collaborative or community? I think artists work alone first of all. You don't work with somebody. People do collaborative works but the artist works on the energy. The community comes in is do you connect to these people with these images? Then it becomes community. And the more people that you can work with people like Tomomi was a group of people. We work humanely and in the community photograph humanely. But still from that particular person now it becomes humanely when people in the community say oh we like that then you're connecting to the people. That's the thing is how any artist is connected with people. The artist is a you're reflecting the spirit you're a doorway and the more you get out of the way get yourself out of the way the more spirit comes to you and then that chance they sell to people. Whether they know it or not they say they'll look at some images I don't like that or I like this they're making the decision based on who they are. That's all spirit. Iron that's in the universe and all the chemicals and all the everything. Energy electricity. All of it that's in the universe is also in your body you're part of the body. You live in 15 pounds with spirit I tell you without telling so what do you mean? Try getting out of 15 pounds with spirit that happens to your body. You live in a dome of energy 15 pounds with spirit everything that was ever here is still here. It sounds like you also have some more collaborations coming up. How do those come to be? Do you reach out to them? Both. I just recently photographed the Native American tribe they had this 347th meeting since the 1800s and it was great they like me and I like them they look like me they're writing into it You were the true editor I don't repeat that so that people can hear in the back the question was now you work with editors in the book do you feel like you yourself are the true editor because you're working on the capturing images You're not the editor you're the doorway this stuff comes you get it sometimes photographers are the worst editors in their work because they think that what they feel is like it's not necessarily true you have to show it to other people because sometimes somebody will tell you something about your work that you haven't thought about because that's another person so editors edit your work but usually they work for magazine they edit it based on what their magazine goal is So the question is about working off of emotion as a kind of way to drive photography and are there photography works that come to mind that do that for you? William Hansel Adams and Weston Eugene Smith all those guys who really hit the nail on the head you know Cartier was on and he only had a 50mm lens he didn't have a telephone he only had a 50mm lens but it was the field that he went into he said he saw so yes there are a lot of photographs that remember from Steven Smith's photographs of the horses in wintertime being in there he's shooting in the snow with a basket on a tripod and those guys walking them to the mountains with these glass plates on their back you know photography wasn't always filmed the old days these guys had these glass plates and they were playing with you know flamboyant things you know gunpowder and all kind of stuff I mean photography wasn't like it is today it was easy technically it was a whole process of a glass plate that you had to expose and then make a print and put it in the sun you know to make a print that's why I think if you're going to learn photography learn how to work in the dark take a shot develop it print it and be excited when you see the images just shot come out it's not like digital digital we have that sense of touch and sensuality that is in photography touching the actual other questions yes do you feel that your painting is independent of your photography or do you think that the two influence each other the question is about Andrew's painting if it's independent of his photography or if the two influence each other I'm an images but by photography it's not like my painting you couldn't say this painting is indicative of Andrew's photography my photography and painting are two different mediums two different but the feeling and the image is important if I make a painting and somebody has a feeling about it I'm one if I make a painting maybe it is maybe it isn't it was a poet way back Basso everybody thought he was a bum but he would walk around he wrote these poems and he would show them to the people and the people said oh that's terrible he'd tear it out other questions let me think about pieces and I was just astounded about the right cast of people that was a feeling of talent that I didn't know but is there a feeling of talent that you have who would like to share with us I mean the question is this is a little harder part but you know there's always a feeling to share with others the question is what are your hidden talents I started as a musician but I I play saxophone and I'm involved in producing them right now I'm a very good cook I thought so I had a sense of it my mother a poor boy and one girl now they depend on me and my grandmother told me stuff and my father was a cook and a baker so I learned how to cook so my aunt when do you cook? I cook every day one more question sir if you would for students who have only read about or heard about or seen a YouTube clip here and there of life in America in the say 50s, 60s, 70s this idea of honoring negative images of blacks and the media gives a little more context I know you can talk about everything but again my larger point is to the lay person and I don't want to generalize general people but heard it, heard it, hear about it but what did that mean to you from a lived experience that point that you could give just a little bit of insight living in America as a black person yes and being intentional about being proactive and countering negative images of blacks and the media I try not to hold on to negativity number one that's a trap somebody calls you out of your name and you respond to it that means they got you they're taking you out of yourself and what you have to do is realize that person doesn't know you so whatever they have to say about you it doesn't mean anything means something to them but it doesn't mean anything to you you do as an African American or a black person or a Nero or whatever you want to say in America you have to deal with racism it deals with you look at all the young people that get killed men and women and young and old for no reason cops stop it they shoot you I thought he was gone or sleeping in the bed sleeping in the bed but we thought he had a gun in the bed there is a definite and it was happening in the 50s and the 40s it's changed a little bit you know I think there are more opportunities to express yourself as an individual but you have to concentrate on what you want to do that's going to be there you can play with it or not the most important job for you as a black person in America is to define your destiny for every human being but it's important for I tell you this all the time Charlie Parker paid that years ago now is the time and now is the time now is the time for you to come forward as John Henry Clark said the black men and the black women women wait in the wings on the stages of the world and they await our engines but we've already been here everybody's in Africa life started in Africa I know started in Africa believed people again and his daughter they proved that the first woman they named her and that probably wasn't her name Annie was the first woman to birth life in Africa life started in Africa but we've been so restrained everybody white people too young and brainwashed too you know you've been brainwashed the same shit that I've been brainwashed you know you used to say there are 12 saints in the African or Catholic that were black you don't know that there would be no America without black people all the things you enjoy is built on black black people cotton cotton made America not just in the south but in the north in the whole world was the money that was the goal and then even back in those days there were some black people that had slaves if you had slaves you had money there were black people that had slaves there were Indians that had slaves wasn't just white people that was the money if you wanted to be you know we had 10 slaves or how many slaves you had that was the money but that's how America was built Yale, Harvard even named all these universities they were all built on cotton the cotton and the slave trade they built those universities and colleges from the higher learning so I think what everybody has to understand is to understand American history and you have to start with black people where they came from how they came here in Africa the pyramids they still don't know how pyramids were built and those were built by people of color how did they build those pyramids but each stone weighed over a thousand pounds how did they do it so well they drug them they don't know what kind of information and knowledge did they have we have to open our heads to a world that in order to understand and change the things that are happening where we have to be honest with ourselves as human beings we're all human and we all breathe blood we say, God, we don't need blood I mean like, ooh, it's green where are you from we all have a shadow everything to be it's how we share with each other we're all breathing the same air in here you can say, well, I don't mind you can hate but you're still breathing the same air everybody breathes H2O where we are on the planet so we're all connected anyway let's find out what we can do together that's such a privilege to have you here I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry we have to do that anyway I think it's important that we understand and think better pictures when you realize that you're a human being and that a bug divides you and you could die tomorrow you think you're invincible but you're not why do people come to you because we need each other why do we have families because we need each other we need each other try being alone for a while by yourself I mean really by yourself why do you think when they put people in jail you put them in isolation they go crazy they go crazy any little sound any little thing they can live again we cannot live with each other we got to have each other let's get to that we will begin to have fun then we can do other things discover things and use them for advancing our minds and our stuff rather than making more well this has been very fun this has been a good time it's supposed to be fun but it's not supposed to be it should be fun so it's such a privilege to have you here we've got we've got Pam here let's invite you to stick around to meet Adger there's some refreshments in the back and we also have Pam who's here to my right we will be taking orders on the focus if you're interested so again thank you a thousand times Adger Cowins and thank you all for coming and please help me in thanking you one more time