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| Ijeoma Iheanacho, fine art photographer |
I answered her casting call that was posted on SocietyHAE. We've kept each other abreast on our shutterbuggery. Last spring, her series, "Faces of the Great Recession", was a featured in the Faces of the Economy show held at the Art for Change Gallery. I finally made it to the Bronx, where she was gracious enough to grant this interview.
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My name is Ijeoma Iheanacho. I am a fine art
photographer.
How long have you
been doing photography?
I’ve been doing photography since college. Graduated high
school in 1996 so… ’96 to 2012… 15 years? I’m trained as an architect, I don’t
do math [laughs].
So “fine art”, that’s your specialty?
Fine art to me, in
photography, means shooting something that’s non-commercial. Beyond that, I
don’t pretend that I have any airs on what I will and won’t shoot.
What is your ultimate goal with photography?
My ultimate goal with
photography, and as an artist, is tell the stories that go untold. Not to speak
for people but to allow people to be heard. I would like to be used as a
conduit to allow people to get their own stories out.
Briefly explain your latest project, The reImagining.
The reImagining is…
featuring yourself [laughter], is basically the stories of 100 women of African
descent. It’s allowing those women to tell the stories about the stereotypes
that affect them every single day. I want them to be able to use my talent to
show the world who they really are.
Are you a self-taught photographer?
A bit. When I was at school,
I did take some independent studies but beyond that, I am self-taught. I did
just complete a course at the ICP which was more for fun than anything
but beyond that, no, I don’t have a degree in it or anything.
In any language, what is your favorite word, and why?
I hate to say it, to be so
cliché, but my favorite word is English, and it’s the word love. Honestly, it really is. When you think about how the world
is, it’s still amazing to me that there is love in the world. When you think
about how horrible and nasty and evil everyone can be to each other, and how
we’re like that on a daily basis, love still blows me away.
I overheard that you were once in the punk scene. What was it like
being a Black woman in that scene?
Being in the scene was me
being a fan. I wasn’t a musician or anything. There was even, for a time, where
I set down my photography; I didn’t even get to shoot during that time. It was
just the idea of seeking out a different lifestyle. I was fresh to New
York… It was good. I was drawn to the music—to me
music is huge, I’m a huge music fan, even though I can’t play any or
anything—the scene was just the scene, me in my early 20’s…
Do you relate to Black feminism?
Oh, definitely. I love the
idea of Black women being able to address their needs and their issues, even
outside of feminism. Feminism means very different things to very different
people. If you look at your traditional feminists, what happened, there
actually had to be a Black feminist movement come out of that because a lot of
our issues weren’t being addressed so I 100 percent feel as though even within
my feminism there’s room for my Black
feminism, the need for my Black
feminism.
Is there any eroticism in your work?
Actually, no. That’s
something I’ve never done before; I’ve never done any nudes. Because I’m constantly
trying to tell a story, I’ve never incorporated any kind of nudity. But to me,
eroticism doesn’t even have to be about nudity or anything like that it’s just
something I’ve never gotten around to. My art is so politics-based [laughs] I’m
still stuck on overthrowing the GOP.
Canon vs. Nikon…
Neither. Pentax. Yeah,
baby. I’m serious. To me, Pentax has what both Canon and Nikon lack at a
cheaper price. And the lenses are so much less expensive. The very first camera
I used was a Pentax and ever since then I always just kept upgrading straight
to Pentax.
Have you ever turned the camera on yourself? Do you shoot any self
portraits?
That is hilarious. I do not
do any self portraits. And they actually asked me that in my ICP class and at
first I said no, I don’t do any self portraits then I said, actually yes, all
my self portraits really are The reImagining—every single one of those
stories—I’m literally telling my story through the stories of my subjects,
every single time, everything I’ve worked on, the politics that are in my brain
that I have my model go through, even though it’s not myself in the image, it’s
what’s going on in my head, so yeah.
Tell me about any upcoming projects.
Well the project that I’m
still working on the install for is called Manipulated Light and Power. The
idea of that first moment you hit that stereotype, that stereotypical wall, the
first time you realize that somebody’s stereotyping you, how do you work
through that mentally, how does that affect who you are. The big antagonist for
Ellison in The Invisible Man is light
so I tried to use light to both define and hide who the model is. So basically
[I] use light as stereotype, I went through the basic five elements of
ascending and descending into the madness of being stereotyped. I’m still working
on the installation of the piece. This is going to end up being a glowing light
box. It’ll be slightly larger than this, I’m still working on the design for
that, the box itself is going to glow, it’ll be a pulsing glow, so you get the
idea of these images that were manipulated by light are being manipulated again.
It’s that constant cycle of misrepresentation that Black women find themselves
going through day in, day out, so this is what I like to call the prequel to ThereImagining. The reImagining is how these women come out of that cycle, how
they break that cycle.
You’re a storyteller, and you like Sci-Fi. Let’s go to the year 3082,
what do you want those future humans to learn from your images?
I want them to learn love. I
want them to understand that people were striving to find their common selves;
people were trying to knock down the barriers that separated us as human
beings. That somebody was trying to say these people have a right to speak,
they’re as valid as anybody else in our civilization, let’s listen to them,
let’s address their issues.
If my muse were an animal, it would be…
Oh, just because I’m such a
dork, it would be a Black African Panther.
Why?
I just love the power behind
something that’s so subtle. Like you never see a panther working hard for its
chase. It’s just always looks so graceful… there’s a lot of tamed wildness and
femininity, like that tamed wildness in Black women, I tap into that when I
feel appropriate and I set it down when I don’t so that’s definitely my animal
muse, a black panther.
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