TRULY BLESSED
Posted in Artist Books / Monographs, Documentary, Monograph, photography on November 13th, 2024Tags: Chris Suspect, Christianity, church, Community Church, Gay, King Koala Press, queer, United States of America
Truly Blessed tells a powerful visual story about a community’s response to discrimination, both racial and religious. Chris Suspect came upon this unusual community by chance. He met Bilal Ali after a taxi hit Ali on the streets of Georgetown in Washington, DC. Suspect photographed the accident and sent him the photos for his lawyer to use. A few months later, Bilal invited Suspect to photograph a private party at a non-descript restaurant in Dupont Circle. At the time, Suspect had no idea he would be introduced that night to an empowered community of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender African Americans.
“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where l am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” John 14:1-4
“Sometimes it is only through photographs that we can see the sacred in the secular, or the secular in the sacred. This collection, Truly Blessed, uses photography to forge a conversation between the sacred black church and secular sexual/erotic spaces, capturing sites where the body, mind, and spirit converge. Suspect’s attention to the subtlety of the performances of everyday people-engaging in rituals of their own choosing-illustrates the diverse and dynamic realities of being black and queer in America.
I was fortunate to be a founding minister at The Community Church of Washington, DC (UCC), the church that is so well-defined in this text.
I had left the DC metropolitan area by the time of this chronicling of sacred-secular aspects of black queer life. However, while in the ministry at the “Community Church,” I always felt conflicted to literally dance in the sanctuary, after a night of dancing and sweating in the streets. My queer peers and I were taught early the separation of the church and the street, the necessary division of the secular and the sacred. In many ways, being in a church where all were welcomed-where queer met straight, trans met bi, and men met women, we were already in a cultural world far different than what we had historically been given within larger and more mainstream black churches. Dare I say, while we may have sometimes felt a degree of shame or conflict—in mixing our sacred and seculars—we all felt the harmony between the spiritual and sexual, as both energies were charged by bodily need, passion, and improvisation. Every now and then the riffs at the DJ booth inside the Bachelor’s Mill would parallel the scratch of the drums behind the pulpit. Indeed, as Suspect shares images of folks engaged in a spiritual worship experience sometimes in the midst of giving devotion to a higher power, sitting in a pew, caring for children, hugging tightly, or speaking from the pulpit-we are offered a look into a word that may be familiar to some and foreign to others.
Likewise, as we move into the clubs and homes, we are presented with bodies who speak sexuality and desire in many ways some standing and watching, some moving, some in drag, some in masturbatory bliss, some posed in a moment of intimate dance, and some ready for the camera while others are unaware of its presence. The way that these scenes of sacred-spiritual and secular-sexual expression still exude the plurality and porousness of community, allows this work to color Black queerness in all its shades.” – Jeffrey Q. McCune, Forward
Author: Chris Suspect
Publisher: King Koala Press
Order here
