Karen photographed by Steven Cuffie, 1979.
When Marcus first started going through their father’s photographs, the images of women immediately stood out. “They were photos I didn’t see until I was an adult and were unknown parts of his work,” they say. “I felt they had something distinct to them. I was thinking about my dad’s work in conversation with Gordon Parks or Baldwin Lee – really great photographers of Black life.”
When Marcus explored the negatives, six or seven of the same women reoccurred. One of those women was Karen. “It felt like a good starting point to put together a small body of work that spoke about her character. I wanted it to feel like you could connect with her personality.”
It’s impossible not to – her presence is undeniable. Karen against a fence, direct yet withholding, her baby hairs swooped delicately into a pair of spirals. Karen, with her eyes averted, her smile bashful. And in one image – Marcus’s favorite – Karen poses with a pair of mink stoles. “There’s an obvious drama,” says Marcus. “It’s interesting to think, ‘Is it just what she had? Is this what my dad was interested in?’ There is a certain staged quality to them. I like that kind of performativity because it allows there to be more of a conversation [in terms of her] involvement in the making of it.”
