How did you become a photographer? Would you define yourself as a one?
I would define myself as an artist. Dancer, actress, video maker, filmmaker, photographer: I am all of these at the same time. I started photography thanks to a combination of circumstances. In 1977, my video camera that had been given to me by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, was stolen. I had had it for six years, and I used it a lot for my work in the South Bronx on the gangs with whom I had formed strong friendships: the Roman Queens, the Roman Kings and the Ghetto Brothers. The camera was just as much theirs as it was mine. Together, we made videos that were shown at Columbia University and by Bertolucci in Italy. One day, Pearl, one of the gang’s presidents, knocked on my door. He had brought me a present: my first camera. That’s how we were able to continue working together! And that’s how, thanks to my friends in the Bronx, I started photography. I would buy rolls of old – and cheaper – black and white and colour film, which made interesting effects when printed. The president of the Roman Queens, Vicky, bought me a pair of army boots so that rats wouldn’t attack my ankles when I went to work in the South Bronx. It was miserable back then. There was no heating. Old people were literally freezing to death! Landlords would burn down buildings to collect insurance money.
What drives you as a photographer?
In photography, as in life, my only guiding principle is to be free. Absolute freedom! I take photos with my heart. I want to share beauty and show it to people. I have developed an intuition which allows me to know if the people I want to take a picture of will accept it or not, or are even asking me do so. In my life, I’ve only been wrong twice! I have always shared my photos. I’ve printed hundreds of photographs for people who have appeared in mine. I have never taken a photo without a person’s consent! I try to disturb people as little as possible and to be as transparent. It’s a way of loving people. Photographing people is a shared love story.
Do you think there is such a thing as a ‘woman’s gaze’ in photography? Is this something you can relate to?
No, absolutely not. I think a photographer’s humanity overrides his or her gender. Whether a photographer is a woman or a man, it doesn’t matter! When I look at a photograph that I like, I never try to find out whether it was a man or a woman who took it: it doesn’t matter to me. I love discovering new photographers, and I don’t care if they’re men or women.
Has being a woman influenced your work as an artist in any way?
This is a surprising question and one that I wouldn’t put in such terms because, if women do indeed have a status which can vary according to time and place, being a woman, or a man for that matter, is not just a question of status.
Do you live off your art?
Yes, my greatest professional achievements have been my exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the open-air film festival in Rome entitled Fuck you! where I was supported by Bernardo Bertolucci; the Paris Museum of Modern Art during the ‘Month of Photography’ in 1984; and at the MEP in 2007 for a major retrospective entitled Harlem in my heart. I have also worked extensively for both French and foreign media.
Which authors have inspired you? Are there any women photographers among them?
Jean Genet, Gilles Deleuze and Marguerite Duras, who helped me a lot; Simone de Beauvoir, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and his fantastic political works and for whom I have worked; and the great filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi have all been very inspirational to me. There is also Angela Davis, Margot Jefferson, Gordon Parks or Copi, whom I liked so much, and with whom I performed one of his plays. But above all I would like to talk about people who aren’t yet famous and who deserve to be: Caroline de Cointet who photographs the light in Paris, Jeanne Grouet, Zaia Hamdi and her wonderful photos of New York in the 1990s, Baptiste Léon who is currently making a series of portraits of people wearing masks in the street to build a visual archive of our times, and the Italian photographer Carlo Bavagnoli whom I recently discovered.
