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WHY ONE PHOTOGRAPHER FOCUSES ON ‘HOME’

Saturday, October 9, 2021

In today’s newsletter, a personal story about a Black middle-class oasis; visually reimagining ‘The Little Prince’; how to take fire photos; herring on the line ... and a bear with a GoPro.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELIAS WILLIAMS

By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences

For the first 15 years of his life, photographer Elias Williams lived in and around the Queens neighborhood of St. Albans, an oasis of Black family homeownership.

Elias, 30, has spent much of the last decade documenting the neighborhood, onetime home to celebrities such as Count Basie, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, and LL Cool J.

Elias, his mother, and his sister lived with his grandmother on a leafy block with friendly neighbors. (Pictured above, kids splash in the front yard of a neighborhood home; below left, the former home of singer James Brown; right, the neighborhood home where boxing champ Joe Louis got married.)

“The community’s uniqueness in terms of its history was just regular to me,” Elias tells National Geographic for the feature in this month’s issue on black family homeownership, to which he contributed the photographs. “I’ve always known one house, having a front yard and backyard, and it was always quiet. You spoke to everybody, everybody spoke to you.”

When he was a freshman in high school, the idyll of his early childhood was stripped away. With his mom and sister, Elias moved to a nearby apartment complex, and then shelters. It took more than two years for the family to regain an apartment.
His focus on his old neighborhood was motivated by a community college assignment to document residents in Queens, such as his grandmother, Barbara Eubanks, who worked for the NYPD’s traffic division. (His portrait of her and her home’s furnishings are below.)

His work in St. Albans, where his grandmother still lives, began in 2012, and it grows with new themes.

“The layers of the housing crisis and using the work as a form of reflection because of how I eventually lived in a shelter would come later,” Elias tells writer Michael Fletcher. “At its core, though, it’s really about highlighting the everyday people in this community and putting them on the same plane as the legends and celebrities.”

Meeting the neighbors: Pictured above, the Isaacs, Jewel Linda and Edward, purchased their house in 1980. Jewel is a retired library manager and Edward is a regional VP at Primerica financial services. Below, their refrigerator is covered with photos of friends and family collected while they have lived in St. Albans.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

‘I Believe I’ll Run On’: That’s the title of an early career survey of Joshua Rashaad McFadden's images at the George Eastman Museum. The photographer, seeking humanity, aims “to engage some of the most challenging subject matter of our time. Working across genres—social documentary, reportage, portraiture, book arts, and fine arts—he critically examines race, masculinity, sexuality, and gender,” the Rochester, New York museum writes. Details here.

Taking fire photos: Truth and accuracy come first, followed by creativity, says veteran Getty photographer Josh Edelson. What’s compelling? “Some of the most impactful photos in fires are when residents are coming back to their homes,” he tells Earther.

Shot by a bear: The bear was hungry. So what does it do when it finds a lost GoPro in Wyoming? It records itself trying to eat it. A hunter later found the GoPro—and the footage, PetaPixel reports.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @NATALIEKEYSSAR

Let’s ride! Teams in women’s rodeo compete in events through the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. The team pictured above, the Flor de Gardenia Escaramuza—performs an abanico, or fan maneuver, riding in perfect unison at a gallop. This image, from our Instagram page, was part of a Nat Geo feature that Natalie Keyssar did on the women’s rodeo, called charreada, from the Mexican tradition.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY RIVER CLAURE

An Andean lens: What if Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s children’s classic The Little Prince was set in South America instead of the Sahara? And what if the story’s main character, rather than a blond prince, was a dark-haired Andean child? That’s what photographer River Claure has done in a visual reinterpretation that challenges clichéd folklore images of the Andes, Sara A. Fajardo writes for National Geographic. (Pictured above, the hero walks through a metaphorical rose garden, where buds blossom from the braids of Indigenous Andean women.)

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES P. BLAIR, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Put the herring on the line: Photographer James P. Blair traveled the world over three decades with Nat Geo, covering everything from agriculture to archaeology. In this unpublished photograph from the Netherlands, Blair captures lines of herring drying in the sun. National Geographic Society’s Sara Manco chose this image. “I love how the light illuminates the fish drying in the sun,” Sara, our senior photo archivist, tells us.

SEE VINTAGE PHOTOS

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Alec Egamov, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have a comment or contribution? Let us know!

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