The Humanities Review

Issue date: 1/16/08 Section: Fall 2007

Thomas Sayers Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988 and earned an M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. Mr. Ellis is a contributing editor to Callaloo and Poets and Writers. In 2005 he was awarded a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers' Award. His first full collection, The Maverick Room, was published by Graywolf Press in 2005 and awarded the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award. He is also the author of The Good Junk (Take Three #1, Graywolf, 1996), the chapbook The Genuine Negro Hero (Kent State University Press, 2001) and the chaplet Song On (WinteRed Press, 2005). He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A. program (Cambridge, Massachusetts). His Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets is also forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series.


Stephen Pasqualina: What's the story behind these first five shots? Did you speak to the guy? Was he alright? Did he just suddenly fall in front of your eyes?

Thomas Sayers Ellis: I had just finished photographing Lloyd Pinchback, an original member of the Soul Searchers, for my project The Go-Go Book: People in the Pocket In Washington, D.C. Lloyd works at the Library of Congress and I shot him there, in the shadow of a waving American flag. I shot him with three different cameras, a Leica Digilux 2, a Hasselblad 500C/M and a Leica R4 SLR-I have a Leica R4. I still love real film. I was sitting on a park bench near the U.S. Capitol building eating a plum when I saw and heard this man, a black man, dash into the water and just sit there in the Capitol's reflection. It was very hot so I just assumed he was homeless and trying to cool off; there are so many homeless people in federal Washington. The postcards and the media hide them but they are there. I couldn't believe the opportunity I was being given, a black man sitting there, like that. Of course I was immediately reminded of the photograph we used for the cover of The Maverick Room. Here was my chance. I sat in front of him and shot him and he just looked at me and didn't move. I shot him and thanked him and went back to my seat.

Continued...

Page 1 of 9 next >

Article Tools