{"id":7352,"date":"2020-05-05T16:56:10","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T21:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/focus-on-endia-beal\/"},"modified":"2023-01-12T15:21:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T20:21:57","slug":"focus-on-endia-beal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/focus_on\/focus-on-endia-beal\/","title":{"rendered":"Endia Beal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full wp-image-53240\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aja.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53240 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 550px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 550\/826;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/aja.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53240\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u00a9Endia Beal, <em>Aja<\/em>, 2016. Courtesy Minor Matters Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We all perform different versions of ourselves in our day to day lives, but some are asked to perform, or rather conform, more than others. When photographer Endia Beal was teaching at Winston-Salem State University, one of the historically black colleges and universities, her students regularly talked to her about what they were experiencing in job interviews. Her students, young women of color, were asked whether they\u2019d consider changing their hairstyles, or the way they dressed \u2013 or their names. In other words, to become someone else. These conversations led to a collaborative series of portraits, <em>Am I What You\u2019re Looking For?<\/em> Like most of Beal\u2019s photography and video work, the series examines issues of race and diversity in the workplace. It\u2019s one of several bodies of work included in her upcoming book <em>Performance Review<\/em> (scheduled to be published this fall by <a href=\"https:\/\/minormattersbooks.com\/products\/performance-review-by-endia-beal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minor Matters Books<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full wp-image-53237\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/kyandra-and-shakiya.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53237 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 550px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 550\/750;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/kyandra-and-shakiya.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53237\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u00a9Endia Beal, <em>Kyandra and Shakiya,<\/em> 2016. Courtesy Minor Matters Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Beal set the portraits in the family homes of her students in North Carolina, but she positioned them in front of a backdrop \u2013 a life-sized photograph of a sterile office hallway. In conceptualizing the series, she was influenced by EJ Bellocq\u2019s <em>Storyville Portraits<\/em> (ca. 1912). Bellocq set up backdrops in an alleyway for some of his portraits of prostitutes in New Orleans, but the alleyway itself was visible in the frame as well, providing layers of information. In a similar way, Beal allows the viewer to glimpse her students\u2019 homes, with artworks, family photographs, furniture, awards, and other markers of a middle-class existence visible around the corporate backdrop, filling in information about her subjects and their identities. \u201cI wanted to photograph my students in a place where they could be their authentic selves,\u201d says Beal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full wp-image-53238\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/christina-and-crystal.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53238 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 550px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 550\/769;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/christina-and-crystal.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53238\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u00a9Endia Beal, <em>Christina and Crystal, <\/em>2016.&nbsp;Courtesy Minor Matters Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Beal\u2019s work draws on other portrait photographers as well, from James Van Der Zee\u2019s studio portraits of Harlem\u2019s middle class in the 1920s and \u201830s to Rineke Dijkstra\u2019s Beach Portraits from the mid-1990s. \u201cThey were photographs of transition,\u201d says Beal of Dijkstra\u2019s photographs, \u201cand I was thinking of my students and their transition from school to the corporate world.\u201d Beal has some experience in that&nbsp;world herself, having worked in an&nbsp;IT department at Yale while she was a graduate student there&nbsp;(the backdrop she used in <em>Am I What You\u2019re Looking For?<\/em> was a photograph of that office). While she was there, a (white) colleague told her that another co-worker (a white man) had been talking about her hair (a cinnamon afro at the time) and how he wanted to touch it. That comment sparked several projects, including <em>Can I Touch It?<\/em>, a series of portraits of middle-aged white women wearing \u201cblack\u201d hairstyles that went viral after it appeared on Slate\u2019s blog Behold in 2013, and a video, <em>Office Scene<\/em>. In the video, Beal invited 17 white men, all coworkers, to touch her hair, then interviewed them. The result \u2013 the goal, in fact \u2013 was discomfort, a flipping of the script that may or may not have produced a more nuanced understanding of the cultural dynamics at play. \u201cI wanted them to feel a level of discomfort,\u201d says Beal. \u201cI felt uncomfortable every day working in that space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full wp-image-53239\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/03_office-scene-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53239 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/1617;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/03_office-scene-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53239\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u00a9Endia Beal, still from <em>Office Scene, <\/em>2012.&nbsp;Courtesy Minor Matters Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When photographer Endia Beal was teaching at Winston-Salem State University, one of the historically black colleges and universities, her students regularly talked to her about what they were experiencing in job interviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"7374,14915,6770,21722,6968,7015,6833,7301,6383,6760,22960,5891","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5160,5139],"issues":[70],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7352"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=7352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}