A visual history of inequality in industrial America

When a local television station did a program about the closing of the major steel mills in the Pittsburgh region, Ray Henderson, a former mill worker who worked in the mills for 18 years, couldn't help but notice that not one black worker was shown. This is despite the fact that African-American workers had formed a critical part of the labor force in western Pennsylvania for 125 years.

With his old friend, independent filmmaker Tony Buba, Henderson set out to collaborate on a history of African-Americans and their contributions not just to the steel industry, but to the labor movement itself. Through eloquent living witnesses and revelatory archival footage, Struggles in Steel presents a striking counterpoint to the stereotypical black male image.

This documentary chronicles how the residents of Braddock, Pennsylvania, organized against a corporate healthcare giant to keep their community hospital. Shot in the cinéma vérité style, the film follows the work of the community over a two-year period. It shows their daily setbacks and struggles, while portraying the town's strength, dignity and spirit.

I watch this play to understand the Great Migration from the South, self-worth — and to creatively put my cultural legacy to use.

This is the film that helped guide me into my collaborations with my mother. Full of compassion and without judgment, this brilliant documentary takes cinema verité and psychological space to another dimension. Shot over a six-week period of time, the Maysles brothers’ encounter with Edie and Edith Beale are not shown in chronological order. This destabilizes the viewers’ sense of time and heightens the complexity of the Beales’ relationship.

My understanding of how to create atmosphere, mood and narrative largely comes from my love of film and cinema, including everything from Antonioni, Bergman, Hitchcock, and Burnett to Wong Kar-wai. I love showing my students the relationship between these filmmakers’ visual language and that of classic photographers such as Atget, Sander, Cartier-Bresson, Evans and Parks. With its soundtrack and lyrical visual language, Killer of Sheep is the ultimate masterpiece.
Set in Watts LA, a portrait of American life is rendered as Stan, the protagonist, struggles with social class and disillusionment while working long hours at a slaughterhouse. The stress to generate financial stability strains relationships with his wife and close friends. The film is an incredible depiction of how we negotiate intimacy and how we are restricted by landscapes and labor.

Sometimes when I’m editing in the studio, I play music by jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran. I was brought deeper into his music when I heard Adrian Piper’s voice in his song “Artists Ought to Be Writing.” While writing the text to accompany my photographs in my first book, I followed Piper’s instructions:

“Artists ought to be writing about what they do and what kinds of procedures they go through to realize a work. If artists’ intentions and ideas were more accessible to the general public, I think it might break down some of the barriers of misunderstanding between the art world and artists and the general public.”

Gordon Parks’ memoir taught me the best reason to pick up a camera: “My deepest instincts told me that I would not perish. Poverty and bigotry would still be around, but at least I could fight them on even terms.”
It is a story of strength, courage, honor — a will to survive and make a mark on history. His ability to express his disdain for poverty, racism and discrimination in America through eloquent, beautiful and dignified photographs is timeless. Any student struggling to understand why some photographers document humanity will gain insight from this autobiography.

I’ve been fascinated by literature’s freedom to render the complexities of dark childhood memories and abject realities. Kincaid’s fictions, semi-autobiographies and multiple points of view are intensely rich and unapologetically evocative. Her ability to take on themes of patriarchal oppression, colonialism, race, gender, loss, adolescence and ambivalence between mothers and daughters inspires me. Any student who wants descriptions of familial relationships or a sense of human relationships to homeland, economy and education could certainly glean universal themes from Kincaid.

DeCarava and Hughes’ collaboration is a perfect example of how history can be reclaimed and redirected through storytelling and imagination. Hughes’ words take us through the eyes of a fictitious grandmother to reveal a representation and memory of Harlem that is at odds with the unloved depictions reported by the mainstream media in the 1950s. Hughes’ last book, Black Misery (1969), is seldom discussed or quoted, but this line resonates with my work: “Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.”