Top: Kim Weston at a recent opening for the show. Bottom: Luca Jaden Rivera's work. Lucy Gellman Photos; all artwork by Wábi Gallery’s 2024 FOCUS Fellows.
The shot is clean, dramatic. At the far end of a table, Luca Jaden Rivera looks straight up at the ceiling, eyes fixed on something beyond the frame. Beneath them, the table is unmoving, a study in contrasts and flatness. Think stainless steel. Think butcher block. The black of satin, of pitch dark night, of darker-than-dark swallows the rest of the frame.
Rivera’s self-portrait is part of “The Beautiful People,” an exhibition of photographs running at KNOWN Coworking through Sept. 30. A collection of self-portraiture, street photography and intimate images of family and friends, the show marks the culmination of Wábi Gallery’s third annual Focus Fellowship class, 11 high school and college students and one elementary schooler who have studied photography with Wábi founder Kim Weston.
Fellows include Marcus Burson, Bethany Edwards, Alexandra Guzman, Tywain Harris, Jameelah Irshad, Haiven Montgomery, Soleil Nelson Mack, Yetunde Olowosoyo, Luca Jaden Rivera, Abril Rosario and Eric Sledge Jr. The show also includes work by Weston’s son, 8-year-old Wes Oske Weston.
KNOWN is located at 157 Church St. in downtown New Haven. Read more about previous Focus Fellowship classes here and here.
Top: Weston (center) with Marcus Burson and Luca Jaden Rivera. Bottom: Alexandra Guzman's "Broken Mirror," in which the artist plays with perspective and framing.
“I had a dream,” said Weston, herself a Black and Native photographer who built Wábi as a way to amplify cultural voices that have long been pushed to the margins. “I said, ‘I want to give back to the community.’ Two Black men [Larry Brown and Eugene Adams] did it for me when I was 12. For me, these pictures are more than pictures. They’re who we are. They’re about our families. They’re about our ancestors.”
That vision comes to life from the moment a viewer walks into the space, a non-traditional gallery that Weston and other Wábi artists have been curating since December 2022. In the open, airy main room, a black-and-white duet of Rivera’s photographs beckons, pulling a viewer in with nearly umbilical force.
In one, the artist leans back, one hand caressing the top of his head as his eyes close. In the center of the frame, his lips part, perfectly lined up with the ceiling. Beneath him, a table holds the weight of his frame. An elbow pokes out, making a perfect angle with his right cheek. His skin seems to glow, a coffee color beneath the light, and the image becomes a study in contrasts.
“What I really wanted to capture was my experience being a Black man--a young Black man, a queer Black man,” he said. During the fellowship, he played with the ideas of Blackness and masculinity, especially inspired by the work of Carrie Mae Weems and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
“I just wanted to be able to reflect and understand myself,” he added. “There are parts of us that we don’t fully realize until we come on camera.”
Top: Work by Weston’s son, 8-year-old Wes Oske Weston. Bottom: Soleil Nelson with her work.
For instance, he said, he wanted to memorialize the act of having his hair braided, which gave him a sense of stepping “into a new era of myself.” In a photograph to the right, Rivera faces away from the viewer, wearing a white tank top with tight, tidy cornrows above. The back of a silver chain peeks out from the nape of his neck. In the background, a gray wall rises in all directions, and it looks as though it might swallow his face if he gets close enough.
Meanwhile, several of Rivera’s peers have turned the lens on their friends and families, often with arresting results. A rising senior at James Hillhouse High School, Bethany Edwards took the program as a chance to photograph her mom, Joy Edwards, in the family’s whimsical kitchen. In a knitted, bright white turtleneck, the senior Edwards looks out skeptically at her daughter, arms crossed just above her waist.
But it’s hard to take her too seriously: striped, old-school floral wallpaper rises behind her, no match for the mammoth, painted and carved fork and spoon on either side of her. In a single shot, Edwards has captured the humor and peculiarity in the banal, reframing that which is familiar to her in a way that delights a viewer. Inspired by Frazier (a cohort favorite, to be sure), Edwards said that the chance to photograph her family helped her see them with new eyes.
“Photography is really good for portraying things you may not have [otherwise] noticed,” she said. “I think of how differently I viewed the world after I started shooting.”
Top: Bethany Edwards. Bottom: Her mother, Joy Edwards, in "Contemplation."
So too in Soleil Nelson’s portraits of her friend, Monaeja Bostik (they are not the only works of hers in the show, and her budding oeuvre is well worth a more sustained close look). In one, Bostik faces the camera, her eyes locked with the lens, and by extension, a viewer. Her hair, braided and wavy, spills gracefully over the sides of her face and down past her shoulders. One arm rests comfortably on a chaise behind her, as the other falls to her side.
She’s not stuck in one format, both she and Weston were quick to note at an opening reception in June. In Nelson’s photograph “The Fog,” two palms press up against a frosted windowpane, their outlines clear against it. One, the left, is surrounded in a flat pool of light, as if it comes with a halo. The other falls lower, more subdued. This summer, she said, she’s taking the time to experiment with framing and subject matter, using friends and family members as her models.
“Oh my God, I love it,” she said of photography. As a vocalist studying at Hamden High and ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), she’s primarily a vocalist, and saw the fellowship as a chance to try something new. “I didn’t know that it could be so technical, that there are so many aspects to it.”
But is it Marcus Burson, a rising senior at Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford, who may have best captured the intimacy and candor of one’s kin, one of the weekly assignments that fellows receive. Framed by the everyday workings of her kitchen--the corner of a cabinet, an air freshener, a sliver of door frame--Burson’s mother pages through a tome, her face contemplative.
There’s something quietly holy here, in the peace that comes over her face as she reads. Her eyes trace the text, unbothered by the click of the shutter. Her left hand freezes gingerly between pages, hidden by the folds of paper. On her shirt, a square of text reads We have before us/the glorious/opportunity/to inject, a reference to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1957 address to the Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations.
“I really do it to have other people see the beauty that they have,” Burson said.
He added that he is influenced by both the photographers that fellows learned about--Dred Scott, Rania Matar, Bill Jacobson, Frazier and Weems to name just a few--as well as his own faith. In the past few years, his beliefs as a Christian--that people are fundamentally good, and don’t always see that in themselves--have influenced every part of his life. He was excited to capture that through the lens of a camera.
Top: Weston addresses a small crowd at a recent opening reception.
On a recent Thursday evening, Weston looked around the space at her fellows, taking it all in. On a wall behind her, a spray painted trumpeter slouched in a brick doorway, his face in shadow beneath his cap. His hands, emerging from a gray suit that seemed too big, caressed the instrument gingerly.
Young photographer Eric Sledge, who graduated from New Haven Academy in June, recalled spotting the image outside Gotham Nightclub downtown. At KNOWN, it feels like it has always belonged, striking up a conversation with the exposed brick that adorns much of the coworking space.
“It unlocked many skills I didn’t know I had,” Sledge said. “I hope to do it again and expand my career.”
That is exactly the hope, Weston said. Three years ago, she started the program on a shoestring budget, asking people to donate used cameras so that students had something to shoot photos on. And extra equipment came from out-of-pocket funds. At the time, she said, she was inspired by both her own experience at the Jamaica Arts Center in Jamaica, Queens, and a similar program at the Studio Museum Harlem that curator nico w. okoro put on her radar.
Top: Sledge's work. Bottom: Abril Rosario. "It's kind of like a mystery," she said of photography. "It just gives your eye a new perspective."
In particular, she wanted to teach young people of color about photographers of color. “We don’t get that in our college education,” she said. “We just get the ‘great whites.’”
Then last year, she was able to score a grant from the city’s office of Arts, Culture & Tourism that covered cameras for each student and funding for teaching artists. The program grew, collaborating with the New Haven Free Public Library for the first time in its young history. She enlisted Alexandra Guzman, a fellow from the first cohort, as a teaching assistant, a practice she still carries with her today.
But she wanted more for her students, she said (Weston still does not pay herself for the program, but she would like to). This year, she received the support of the Pincus Family Foundation, which allowed her to expand the fellowship and envision its future. She bought new, top-of-the-line DSLR cameras for all 12 students. She worked with photographer Bud Glick to do the printing for the show. The two have worked together on multiple projects, including Truth In Three Colors at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art last year.
Thursday, she beamed out at a gathering that filled KNOWN’s main room, two dozen faces smiling back as afternoon sun came through the windows. As she recalled the past months of work on the fellowship, she took time to recognize each student, some nodding or blushing in return. Abril Rosario, who recently graduated from James Hillhouse High School, cracked a huge smile.
“I want you to thank these young people,” Weston said, “For making me feel alive.”
The Beautiful People runs at KNOWN Coworking, 157 Church St. in downtown New Haven, through Sept. 30.