“It started out basically when I was wondering around 42nd street. There was this famous place on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue called ‘Show World’. It was a peepshow place. On the first floor were real women. You could go in a booth, pay your money and they danced and took their clothes off or whatever. On the ground floor it was basically booths with dirty movies. Downstairs, in the basement, were the femme-queens. I went downstairs one day and that was the beginning. I wanted to take pictures of them. So my early images are these portraits of femme- queens. That’s how I started.”
Rob Perrée meets Gerard Gaskin.
IN SOME WAYS ALL MY WORK HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH ME
“The balls are a celebration of black and Latino urban gay life. They were born in Harlem out of a need for black and Latino gays to have a safe space to express themselves. Balls are constructed like beauty and talent pageants. The participants work to redefine and critique gender and sexual identity through an extravagant fashion masquerade. Women and men become fluid, interchangeable points of departure and reference, disrupting the notion of a fixed and rigid gender and sexual self. My images try to show a more personal and intimate beauty, pride, dignity, courage, and grace that have been painfully challenged by mainstream society. All of this happens at night in small halls in cities all over the country. These photographs, taken in New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Washington, D.C., show us different views of these spaces as they are reflected in the eyes of house and ball members who perform what they wish these cities could be.”
— Gerard H. Gaskin about: Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene.
When I read this text about the new book of the Trini-American photographer Gerard Gaskin, illustrated with works out of the book, I knew for sure that I wanted to have an interview with him. We met at our local coffee shop in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. Early in the morning, on a cold day, when the place was still quiet and the equipment still had to warm up.
Gerard Gaskin puts his book in front of me.
Rob
This book is part of the Honickman First Book Prize in Photography you got?
Gerard
Yes.
Rob
It looks great. With an introduction of Deborah Willes…..What do you want more? Congratulations.
Gerard
Thank you.
Rob
How did you get to this subject, the house ballroom scene? It reminds me of Harlem photography of the twenties. Does it have to do with it?
From ‘Legendary’ project.
Gerard
My teacher was a gentleman named Roy DeCavara (1919-2009).
Rob
That explains it. I know his work. I have the book he did with Langston Hughes. ‘The Sweet Flypaper of Life’. His work must have influenced you of course.
Gerard
Very much so. I mean, we hung out at Hunter College for three years. My first photography teacher was another gentleman named Jules Allen, also a disciple of Roy and he worked at Queensborough Community college. When I was done there he advised me to go to Hunter. You need to study with Roy, he said, if this is what you want to do, that’s what you need to do.
Rob
Is there a reason why you used mainly black and white for this project? Because DeCavara and black and white are some sort of logical unity?
From a new project on ‘Balls’.
Gerard
I worked on this project for many years. I started out as such right, as being a black and white photographer. But it was also about finance. It was much cheaper back then. For me black and white gave me the possibility to figure out what I wanted to do and what I could do. It was easier to experiment with.
Rob
It gives the project that historical feeling.
Gerard
That’s what I want. I only started shooting color because people asked me to. Clients reacted like ‘what’s the stuff looks like in color?’ And then of course the whole digital world came in. Then I started shooting digital and in color. I like it that the book shows the process. I worked on these photos, on and off, for about twenty years. It started as a senior project for College. The first photos are not in the book. I was not very good back then. I am still trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. After I graduated I went back to Trinidad. I stayed there for about a year and a half. I worked for a newspaper. That was good for my skill level, because I was shooting every day.
Rob
Why did you choose this subject?
Gerard
Oh man, that’s a long story.
Rob
It doesn’t matter. If you have time I have time
From new project on ‘Balls’.
Gerard
It started out basically when I was wondering around 42nd street. There was this famous place on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue called ‘Show World’. It was a peepshow place. On the first floor were real women. You could go in a booth, pay your money and they danced and took their clothes off or whatever. On the ground floor it was basically booths with dirty movies. Downstairs, in the basement, were the femme-queens. I went downstairs one day and that was the beginning. I wanted to take pictures of them. So my early images are these portraits of femme- queens. That’s how I started. Then there is a really famous femme-queen named Danielle. She took me to a ball. I went with her and after that first visit I was just hooked. Oh man…
Rob
Did they allow you to make photos?
Gerard
The first six months it was like the ‘Paris is Burning’ thing. Not the entire scene was excepting ‘Paris is Burning’. Money was an issue. At that time perhaps two or three photographers were interested in that scene. It was new to them. So the first six months, the first three or four balls, I basically shot the back of the heads of people.
Rob
Because you didn’t dare to do more.
Gerard
I was petrified. I was about nineteen, twenty years old. What do you think! Then I met this guy named Douglas. Douglas was a clothes designer and he designed clothes for the femme-queens back then.
Rob
He could introduce you to that that world.
Gerard
Me and him, we started doing all these portraits that I talked about. We basically photographed all the leading femme-queens of the day. I think I photographed twenty-five to thirty femme-queens.
Rob
How did Trinidad react on these portraits?
Gerard
Trinidad is a weird place, especially around homophobia and all that kind of stuff. I think in some ways it is probably part of the reason to keep me doing it. I felt that it would be really interesting to see what I would ultimately get out of it and what it would do for me as a person.
Rob
And for Trinidad.
Gerard
Yeah exactly. In the art community and in the intellectual community there are a few openly gay men. The average Jo is a completely different person. And I think that it was interesting for my family. Here is this crazy kid from New York. First he wanted to be an artist. What the hell does that mean? I had a little earring back then and they were like……
Rob
Shocked.
Gerard
New York just took him apart. That was their reaction.
Rob
Are the reactions different now? Your family? Trinidad?
Gerard
It’s funny, after my book came out, the headline in the newspaper was: ‘Trini lens-man wins price for gay photos’. Lens-man is already a strange word. It sounded as if I was a porn star. So, what do you think? Not the best introduction of my work there……
Rob
When did you start with the photos of people in their surroundings, people who were active in the ballroom, who were functioning there?
Gerard
The femme-queens at that time were mother of the house. After I made portraits of them it loosened up the other people. Then I started meeting these other people. The fathers of those houses. They were running the balls, they were the forefront. I started hanging out with them. I developed some kind of relationship. It did not happen overnight. It’s an intimate scene. Since there is so much backlash, safety is very important for them, to express themselves.
Rob
What role does this project play in your life, in your oeuvre?
From ‘Legendary’ project.
Gerard
When I was maybe about thirteen, fourteen years old, I used to go to a Catholic Church. A brother at the Catholic Church gave me a love letter and told me he was in love with me, and that I was showing him signs that I was in love with him. So as a very young man I had to deal with the question: what is my sexual orientation? I could no say already: that’s what I am. Hanging out in 42nd street is partially because of that experience. In some ways all my work has something to do with me, has something to do with my ideas. I always say: it has something to do with my demons. It’s kind of being honest.
Rob
Are you an artist? A photographer? Or is it the same for you?
Gerard
I see myself as a photographer. I don’t easily think, I’m doing fine-art photography. Photography is my medium, so I am a photographer first. I don’t think I am a photo journalist. He has to put a lot of information in his photo. I like to put people in the Americana environment. People putting in their space for me is an extension of me trying to find my space. I identify with searching for that space. You know, I am this guy born in Trinidad and growing up in the US. The house is back in Trinidad, so you have to figure out where is your space. When you grow up you feel like you are in both spaces. Me and my wife are always arguing about it, because she says I’m from America and she is from Sri Lanka. I have been here more than I have been in Trinidad. DeCavara has sent me back to Trinidad, because, he said, you need to find your identity. You need to be an adult back in Trinidad and if you don’t find that it will be vey difficult to find your voice in an interesting way.
Rob
Is there an influence of Trinidad in your work?
Gerard
That blurred stuff is Trinidad.
Rob
Sorry?
Gerard
My work has a lot more to do with folklore, it has to do with carnival, it deals with jouvay, it deals with the demon, with the evil spirit that you would find in the nighttime, with the whole idea of African spirituality, like trying to keep evil spirits off you. Watching that, the pictures that I first started taking there were very blurry, because it was at night and I wasn’t shooting with flash. Then I started playing with that idea of blurriness and spirits and how does that blurriness give mystery and energy to pictures. It has to do with what my father would talk to me about. My father used to be an old mask maker. He was part of the tradition of Trinidad.
Rob
Do you always work in series?
From ‘Beach’ project.
Gerard
It has to do with focusing. I can’t take random pictures and then create something out of these random pictures.
Rob
How do you come to a subject, a theme?
Gerard
I process it. Maybe I might see something on television, maybe I might see something in a book, or I might be sitting down watching Charlie Rose or Amy Goodman. Then I come up with an idea, I come up with some kind of process and try to work on it, think about it.
Rob
Where are you working on now?
Gerard
On cricket. Cricket has to do with the Caribbean identity. Cricket is big in Trinidad. ‘Beyond a Boundary’ of C. L. R. James was my inspiration. In a very indirect way it’s about why the Caribbean wanted to be independent from England. He says that it’s because the West Indies cricket team started beating England in test matches. Now, in 2014, it’s more about trying to figure out what is Caribbean identity, how do we define it. I will go to Trinidad for it, almost as an outsider. That makes it even more interesting.
Rob
How do you visualize identity?
Gerard
You can see glimpses of it in the way people wear their shoes, how they gesture, the way they……. And of course the space itself: the different kind of bricks, the different kind of buildings, the streets that are different from the streets here in Bed Stuy.
Rob
Is a book for you a good medium to expose your work?
Gerard
I don’t know. DeCavara always talked about books, doing books. So in turn I wanted to do books.
Rob
The intimacy of the photos is stronger in a book, in the more or less private environment of a book.
Gerard
I think you are right. I never really thought about it in that way. I also can imagine though that some projects have more effect on the walls of a gallery. Depending on how much control you can have on the way the curator installs the show.
Rob
Did ‘Legendary’ change your situation as an artist, as a photographer?
Gerard
Hopefully it will open a lot more doors. In a way it has already. There was a lot of publicity in newspapers and magazines. I was joking with a friend: a year ago I was making phone calls, now I’m receiving phone calls. A lot of people want to talk with me. The people in the photography scene knew who I was; right now a lot of other people seem to know me too. But it is still not easy to show my work, to make twenty years of work seen.
We decided to meet each other again, next time when I am in New York. In the meantime I got the invitation for a big show of his work. He does not have to worry much about his work being seen. That’s happening already.
Brief bio: Rob Perrée is art historian, freelance writer and curator. He is editor in chief of Africanah.org. See www.robperree.com.