A project by Kim M Reynolds.
In writing to his nephew, James Baldwin told younger James about his father, and how he was long destroyed before he ever died because “at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him”.
Audre Lorde tells us that she had to define herself or else she would be “crunched into other people's fantasies” and be “eaten alive” . As such, she routinely introduced herself as a “Black lesbian feminist mother warrior poet”.
And Zora Neale Hurston said “if you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it”.
Considering these thoughts from Black creatives, two of whom were openly gay, begs the question of how do we become? In the teeth of a world that is structured by whiteness therefore creating (violent) structures of anti-Blackness, homophobia, transphobia, poverty, ableism, etc, how do we be who we are? In a world where we can die long before we stop breathing, where we are targeted, where we are erased, where we are simultaneously overdetermined, why is this important to become? How does it happen? Where, and when?
Becoming is a photo series that seeks to address some of these questions by capturing individuals who identify as Black, queer, and creative in their moments of becoming - doing the work that helps them be who they are. The portraits feature Allison-Claire Hoskins, Cyan Peppah, Neo Baepi, Qondiswa James, and Thabile Makue.
In addition to their portraits, each collaborator featured in this project was interviewed and asked a series of questions about their processes of becoming. What came out of these was incredibly tender and insightful, and a standout line was said by Neo, who thought of becoming as “a very active process of not being small”.
All the photos and interviews took place in Cape Town, South Africa, and all participants are South African, amongst many other things. The project does not attempt to “speak back” to any colonial gaze, but rather concerns itself with honoring the experiences and knowledges of Black queer people wholly.
Overall, this work seeks to love.
It seeks to love our Black queer personhoods that are routinely subjected to violence and shame. This work seeks to love and see Black queers people as human beings and hopefully work towards a point where, as Jennifer Declue notes, “trauma will no longer be a requisite threshold to cross” .
More about Kim
Kim M Reynolds is a Black and queer race and media scholar, writer, organizer/producer, and music lover currently based in Cape Town and is from Cincinnati, Ohio. Becoming is her Masters thesis at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her research interests centre largely on how oppression is reproduced through discourse and media, and she focuses on discursive colonialism and neoliberalism, Black feminist thought, critical race theory, Black queer theory, and postcolonial theory. Kim has completed a double masters in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and UCT. Her masters thesis at LSE was awarded a distinction and is published here
Outside the academy
Kim is an organizer around politics and the arts, producing events and workshops at local initiatives and working in grassroots coalitions. She writes social and political commentary and her work has been published in Teen Vogue, Black Youth Project, and VICE. Kim has also produced and curated work at institutions like Lincoln Center for the Arts, Media Diversified, and AfroPunk Joburg. She is currently part of the research and organizing collective Our Data Bodies, which looks at the intersection of marginalization and big data and surveillance.
Overarchingly, Kim cares deeply about the advancement of marginalized communities, especially Black queer people, and the arts.