#mississippiportrait

[ruddyroye]

June 13, 2017 Change is inevitable Hi Radcliffe, hope you're well! Read the piece in the Times then went back to check the photos. So wonderful to see it was your work. Such powerful stories. I wonder about your attitude towards the black gay/bi-sexual male before and after doing this work. This was not the first one I received. It seem that the combination of my homophobic beginnings in Jamaica and growing up in the church had caught up with me. People were curious. One never goes on a journey like this and not change. But my metamorphosis began years ago. It began when an ex told me that her friend who was gay was questioning his relationship with his Creator. Meeting Cedric, Jermerious, Timmy, Benjamin and Justin brought me inside a world where for the first time I was not an outsider. I was their friend, brother, father, and confidant. I was no longer a straight man trying to get a story. In their presence, I learnt their stories of courage, innovativeness, and honesty. I also saw their pain, hopelessness, depression and abandonment. For some, it was their secret, for others, it was the thing they had to explain to the ones they love. For others it was the truth they lived with everyday. Living with HIV in 2017 as a black man in Mississippi is not easy. Benjamin, Timmy and Jermerious came into my life and taught me things about myself that no other situation could. You have never felt invisibility, fear, invalidation, endurance, humanity and love like watching these young black men compose a life in some of the most insurmountable odds while living in Jackson Mississippi. Full story is in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine with a beautiful story by Linda Villarosa. #whenlivingisaprotest #mississippiportrait #fujifilm_us #fujifilmxt2 @fujifilmx_us #onassignment #newyorktimesmagazine @nytmag (at Jackson, Mississippi)

[ruddyroye]

June 7, 2017 Photography as Alchemy. Intentionality. It's the one word I set out to prove in my work every day, the one reason for everything that I capture within a frame. Within this frame are the little bits of magic that encapsulates the story. The frame is both alchemy and philosophy, it is both ephemeral and reality. Jackson, Mississippi at first glance appeared to be one cauldron of nothingness. Tall brawny strapping green trees that seem to have lost their purpose. Their branches no longer swing low with strange fruit. Empty street roads that meander along the busy train tracks muttering audibly to themselves about silent feet and abandoned buildings. I spoke to faces that followed the empty streets that went nowhere. I walked with them down Mill and Farish. I balanced their stories between the tip of my index finger and the palm of my left hand, carefully snapping their tales like dried twigs for the fire, burning the mettle of their souls into pure human beings. #whenlivingisaprotest #mississippiportrait #fujifilmx100f #fujifilmxpro2 #fujifilm_us @fujifilmx_us #ruddy_bw (at Jackson, Mississippi)