00 Rahim Fortune, Les Rencontre d_Arles, winner, prix Louis Roederer, I can’t stand to see you cry.jpeg
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The land of freedom is where black people were oppressed. Rahim Fortune is 2022 Arles photo festival winner

I can’t stand to see you cry exhibition shows «history has also made it more difficult for men and women to love each other» – in conversation with Arles prix Roederer winner

Rahim Fortune, winner of prix Roederer at Les Rencontres D’Arles 

To expose his line of work at Les Rencontres D’Arles, the Photography Festival promoting contemporary creative talents since 1970, was Rahim Fortune, the young photographer subtly challenging the threshold of American identity. Born in Austin, Texas, and living in New York City, his pictures envelop a coming-of-age sensation, crossing between his roots and him processing them.

The first self-produced Photography book, Oklahoma, was launched in 2020 when he was only twenty-six years old. At the peak of social and health struggles during the first period of Covid lockdown, Fortune continued photographing, this time conducting a series of shots developed in his hometown, around familiar surroundings and faces. 

I Can’t Stand to See You Cry, the title of the last book Fortune put together bottles up gashing feeling contrasted by cozy sceneries. Inspired by a song title performed by The Whatnots, I Can’t Stand to see you Cry carries on to a more culturally representative meaning. 

A song popularized by other groups such as The Escorts and sampled by J.Dallia, it comes out of the ‘nitty gritty’ analog hip hop production scene. «It’s a song with an immense emotional depth, but it also has this kind of Genesis throughout generations of black practitioners of art and music. The verbal expression is highly representative of the feelings I had while making the work and the community I was addressing,» Fortune explains. 

I Can’t Stand to See You Cry

Friends, family, or people he encountered during daily life, the photographer intends to capture «the most whole and authentic selves» of black people while leaning toward an autobiographical imaginary. «It is an expression of how I am seeing the world at that time». Without any academic formation, as art and photography autodidact, Rahim Fortune started with observation, being inspired by traditional social documentary photography alongside the topographic approach to American landscape photography.

In his exhibition, I Can’t Stand to See You Cry, Fortune chooses a series of images tracing back to his work from 2016. He gains awareness of the maturation in the approach following the pandemic by «not being too sentimental about the harshness of trying to make a still photograph, which is the quickest medium, often the highest produced and mostly discarded; making something compelling using the most traditional materials».

Fortune’s pictures take on different subject matter, blurring together through his gaze, finding a rhythm in synchronizing landscapes, interior details, or people. «When you put them together, the spaces that people frequent, the way that they enjoy nightstands or dressers in a way that there’s so much tradition within, that it also speaks to the kind of haptic or textural nature of the portraiture that I hope to express».

Loving in a black America. Withdrawing from oppression

To speak volumes – Two people holding a melancholic embrace, the profile of a comforting feeling released in the subjects’ closeness. For the I can’t stand to see you cry book cover, Rahim Fortune chose the image of him and his partner Miranda Barnes – a universal declaration of love and peace. The camera isn’t only a lens for creation and self-expression, but a mirror for people Fortune loves and admire, a way to «grapple with all of the chaos, being able to find a purpose within, searching for the beauty which is not often on the surface».

Tales of community and identity representation oppose freedom relinquishment. The spaces become historical protagonists, not witnesses, their stories told in black and white. Billy and Mentally is one of the particularly emotional pieces from the work Fortune exposed in Arles, a photograph made almost by mistake in the haze of a moment. Initially, he meant to capture a single subject standing in front of a white home in Buda, Texas, previously a freedmen colony called Antioch colony. It was the place where emancipated people started to form some of the first free black spaces in Texas. 

Between Austin, Texas, and New York

«His girlfriend and stylist came up to adjust his clothing. And then they embraced. And at that moment, I just decided to take a photograph». Fortune recalls it not being one of the favorite shots of the day, nonetheless growing on him for what it represented. «It had a profound effect on me. Some of the traumas that have been enacted on black Americans in Texas, how that has affected some of the ability to form full romantic agency within these spaces, and how this history has also made it more difficult for men and women to love each other».

Between Austin, Texas, and New York, the young designer belongs to no place, trying to find peace wherever he is. He confesses however to having a deep connection with Texas, the space he photographs most: «It is a very meditative and spiritual place for me». A form of longing for affection and intimacy, Rahim Fortune’s work remains immensely human even when grasping landscapes or buildings.

The sense of familiarity evoked by a mixture of portrays and interior details reflects the presence of someone who knows these images by heart, who is accustomed to seeing three shades falling on the fence and car wheels being changed. Routine takes the place of glamor with a wise calm. «I try to be present and aware and engaged with the people around me because I just know how fleeting life can be».

Exploring trauma and grief with the enticement of realism

In the year of the pandemic, Fortune’s Father was dealing with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a terminal illness culminating in the two following months. The experience gave ways to new depths of perception, coying with memories of a fleeting present. 

«Historically, many artists have spoken about the camera being a buffer between yourself and the issues you’re working with. And it represents transforming the ability to deal with heavy or traumatic instances». Rahim Fortune draws strength from the images he created, paralleling his grief to that of a global health crisis, during political and cultural issues piercing the state of America.

He opposes the Utopic representation of black youth in contemporary photography, contrasting the series of events that came to the surface after George Floyd’s protests in 2020. Fortune is someone who had no choice but to metabolize trauma. The young photographer empathizes with a collective battle against racial injustice, his black portrayal a way of vindicating the issue of true inequity where «history has put us in positions to feel so much pain. And to me, that is healing more so».

Covid-19, a global shutdown

During the shifting social movements, diagnosed with the rage of black people on one side and the fear for their community due to the increasing cases of Covid-19 on the other, Rahim Fortune had a breakthrough in his photographic path. He noticed how after the mediatization of George Floyd’s death, the black artist began to be viewed in new ways, gaining the attention they deserved.

During the global shutdown, with no access to studios and the borders closed, production became obsolete. Fortune, who worked assisting photographers for glossy editorial projects, noticed how that moment in time represented «a call for more realistic, intimate and critical portrayals,» allowing people to subvert what they were dealing with.

While shining a new light on his work, the photographs became an alignment between inner and collective battles, between personal and community trauma, making space for creatives to address an ongoing situation. Fortune describes his work as a «small journal entry about how to grapple with the intersections of traumatic and critical moments in one’s life that maybe has some universal ringing to it».

I can’t stand to see you cry remains an open question for the viewer, no protesting aims to his depiction of a wild, enduring while soft and welcoming South America. Photography becomes a tool for grief, to connect and concern one another in times of solitude. Throughout Rahim’s exhibition, photography is a means to acknowledge and remember difficulties just to be able to empower yourself and the people drawn to the same feeling of release. 

Rahim Fortune

Fortune was raised in the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. His documentary photo practice focuses on culture, geography and self expression in the American landscape. He currently lives and works between Austin, Texas and Brooklyn, NY.

Maria Hristina Agut

The writer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article.

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