I first came across Durham, NC-based photographer Faith Couch's work a few years ago when one of her images stopped me in a near-endless Instagram scroll. Two arms, one slightly darker than the other, jut into the frame. One rests slightly above the other, both bend at peculiar yet relaxed angles, struck with warm, even sunlight. Framed before a desert horizon, the sun casts them as if they were placed before a studio backdrop. They flatten and deepen the perspective and relationship to space, and create a new way of looking at form as symbolism. As viewers, we have no idea whose bodies or souls they belong to, yet there's a suggestion of love, humility, and tenderness. They are fantastical yet intimate. They feel like science fiction braced with empathy and optimism.

These feelings resonate throughout Couch's work, which she describes as focusing on "the Blackness that exists in the peripheral and informs all things." Her entire practice pushes against degrading historical narratives about Blackness and instead celebrates the significance and influence of Black culture across the globe. It's about self-love, centering, and creating a vast and positive spectrum of Black representation, often with the body as a central form.

In the past year, Couch's work has recently garnered the attention of curators like Antuan Sargent, who included her in his widely acclaimed book and exhibition The New Black Vanguard, is now part of the SeeInBlack collective, and was included in the 2019 exhibition In Conversation: Visual Meditations on Black Masculinity at the African American Museum in Philadelphia for her uniquely powerful vision.

I recently spoke with Couch about her practice, inspirations, and the complexity of representation.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Faith Couch

© Faith Couch. No.1 from the Series Carefree Black Girls, 2017

Jon Feinstein: I understand you were creative at an early age. What are some of your first memories related to art?

Faith Couch: I have to attribute my love for art to my parents and the environment they engendered for me. In our living room there was a huge photo book called A Day in the Life of Africa by David Elliot Cohen. It is a beautiful book with lots of images of Black people with different features and customs living in diverse places all over the African continent. Although I did not know until later, his book made a major influence on me.

From a young age I was allowed to explore my own creativity and be free. My parents would have tea with me all the time and I would then paint or draw. I'm embarrassed to admit that I drew on couches, walls, mirrors, and any other surface I could get to. At my rigorous private school, I was always the creative one, drawing with one or two of my classmates, nothing serious. Art was always considered an extracurricular or “arts and crafts.”

Feinstein: When did you first start making your own photos?

When I got to high school, I was taking art classes in my tenth-grade year with Anne Gregory-Bepler. Our school had two huge art studios that were next to each other. I began collaging with National Geographic magazines that were printed in the early ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. The colors were rich; as I flipped through I studied gestures and the photographer’s gaze and how they used framing. That was one of my first reintroductions into photography. When I was making collages there was a preciseness that I was trying to get in using X-Acto knives and isolating the body when I cut it out and that’s what really drew me back to photography, I think.

In high school, I started to think about my identity and what it meant for me to be Black and grown-up in a world of privilege. Going to private school my whole life having access to things and never worrying about anything made me think about how my life didn't look like the one depicted when I turn on the TV or when I opened a magazine. The stress and sadness I saw, I could not identify with any of the things portrayed in the media about the lives of Black people. In turn, I began to take pictures as a way of documenting my own life and my family’s life as a mental note to myself.

What fascinated me about photography is the way that it confirms truth or the way that it can reaffirm stereotypes. So for me, photography was a way of understanding myself and adding to my family archive. My high school photography teacher, who is actually an amazing photographer- Harrison Haynes, really challenged me to delve more into photography and helped convince my parents that I should go to school for it.

© Faith Couch “They Always Return To The Land” From the series Being. 2018-2019 — © Faith Couch “They Always Return To The Land” From the series *Being.* 2018-2019

Feinstein: Who were some of your early photographic heroes or influences?

Couch: My father’s favorite movie is Superfly, directed by Gordon Parks. I started digging and learning more about Gordon Parks, studying his eye and the way he used color, framing and images to depict Black people’s lives. I admired Gordon Parks, and I wanted to make images of my family and friends that showed them existing as I saw them. Soon after discovering Gordon Parks, I discovered Roy DeCarava, falling in love with his images and how they looked like Jazz. The way he used shadows and captured intimacy through very simple gestures absolutely amazed me.

My senior year of Highschool I attended Carrie Mae Weems’ artist talk at The Nasher Museum at Duke. That was a pivotal moment for me getting to meet her and hear her talk about her work and vision. Her kitchen table series spoke to me profoundly. Weems created these amazing images of Black people existing in a regular space doing regular activities.

© Faith Couch. From the series Terrain . 2017 — © Faith Couch. From the series *Terrain* . 2017

Feinstein: You describe your work as being about "Blackness in the periphery." Can you elaborate on the idea of the periphery?

Couch: People talk about Black culture as if it is mutually exclusive from American Culture and often ignore its role in shaping cultures globally. Civil rights has shaped the world, not just for Black people gaining their rights but for all peoples of different races and orientations.

This is especially true when it comes to the Arts. If we look at rock & roll, hip hop, jazz, country, blues, house music, etc., all of these sounds are derived from the souls of Black folk and like anything else, it has morphed and changed over time but the origins don’t shift. Now more contemporarly, there’s TikTok and the origins of dances and sounds that ooze into pop culture are derived from Black creatives.

Picasso and Matisse are both accredited for their stylistic choices, but their choices are influenced by “primitivism” and African art. For example, the mixing of low and high culture, street style becoming couture in and being marketed at high prices in fashion is another way of how Blackness is in the forefront but yet exists in the peripheral. We are pushed to the outside, often unable to even be apart or afford to participate.

Although Black people’s contributions to American culture are great and vast, historically, Black people are rarely credited or only included into the canon posthumously.This is yet another way Blackness exists in the peripheral.

© Faith Couch. From her series Then I remembered the most radical thing Black people can do- continue to love each other. 2020 — © Faith Couch. From her series *Then I remembered the most radical thing Black people can do- continue to love each other.* 2020

Feinstein: Love (cultural, personal, self-love, empathy, etc) seems to be at the crux of your practice - nearly all (if not all!) of your work hinges on it.

Couch: I want other people to see through my images that infinite possibilities of intimacy, happiness, and love can exist outside of the boundaries that have been set.

My parents said that when I was born, they stopped going to work. They cultivated a wonderful environment for me, allowing me to be myself, to explore, to play outside in my treehouse, or watch old cowboy movies on Saturday and music was always played throughout the house. I feel that so much of my life and my youth felt surreal and magical and it was filled with love and I want other people and especially other Black people to know that feeling. I want my images to invoke your imagination and have people consider new possibilities and feelings.

Love is freedom and freedom means autonomy. From “CareFree Black Girl” to “Being” to “My Man and I” to “Then I remembered…,” they’re all about the same thing.

When I got a chance to sit down with Zanele Muholi, they critiqued my work and left me with an amazing understanding which was, they do not consider the people in their pictures subjects but collaborators. That helped me understand my practice much better.

For me making an image is about its authenticity. I want ultimate comfortability because that comes through in the shot. Timing is important to me, proper sunlight, the time of day, etc., is important to me. But even more important is when I see in my collaborator’s eyes that they trust me and that they are interested in participating and creating this image. That they fully understand and are excited about their own participation. From that experience comes friendships and an opportunity for me to teach others about being autonomous.

Feinstein: Building on that, what is the story behind your most recent series "The most radical thing Black people can do is love each other”?

Couch: Before I make an image, I do a lot of mind mapping. I collect images. I like finding patterns of gestures in paintings and drawings and photographs of lovers. I love studying different archives, old pictures from the ‘50s and ‘60s of Black people picnicking or laying in parks. Through mind mapping and creating my own personal archive of imagery, I try to create a synthesis of patterns; narrowing down gestures that symbolize love or intimacy. I'm always learning and continuing my understanding of imagery. As I've been looking at the History of Photography as it pertains to Black people, I am always amazed at the ways in which we photograph ourselves. Looking all the way back from reconstruction times to now, Black people are still celebrating life.

© Faith Couch. From the series My Love and I. 2018-2019 — © Faith Couch. From the series *My Love and I.* 2018-2019

Feinstein: I keep coming back to your "My Love and I" series. There are no faces, the placement of the mirror is intriguingly disorienting - as a viewer, it's unclear where the photographer is, how we're looking, who is looking, how they're looking. Without visible faces, there is a removal of identity, yet a kind of deep reveal and it also feels deeply personal. It's incredibly expressive and metaphoric.

Couch: Gesture is so important in my work, I think it is the most basic form of human communication. It's about a simple embrace that takes place in the most mundane place in your home- the bathroom.

This series was the first iteration of a self-portrait for me. I wasn't totally comfortable with showing my entire self but rather a portion. The back is such a sensual and vulnerable part of the body, and I felt that was all it took to portray that sort of emotion. I was also interested in this temporal moment having a timelessness about it. There’s no way to understand or decode the time or era.

I was interested in anonymity because I want the viewer to be the voyeur but also want the persons in the image (my partner and I) to maintain the power by shielding both of our gazes away from the viewer. So it’s a balance of intimacy yet so much is not revealed to the viewer.

Feinstein: In that series, and much of your work, the body plays an interesting role. In my interpretation, it both references and rejects objectification. It's both performative and emotive. In some series you cast bodies as landscapes - focusing on their topography, abstracting them. In your studio driven work, it seems to be a kind of conceptual performance. And then in your recent series, it feels a bit more personal, open, intimate, and maybe emotionally revealing. It also seems to push against traditional gender roles or expectations. How are you thinking about “the body” in your practice?

Couch: Jacques Derrida argues, “[There is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory. The archive affirms the past, present, and future; it preserves the records of the past and it embodies the promise of the present to the future. If the archive cannot or does not accommodate a particular kind of information or mode of scholarship, then it is effectively excluded from the historical record.”

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4.

That quote stuck with me because it made me more aware of how politics are involved in art, and how important it is to have your own archives because work by Black people is often measured by the status quo.

Viewers and consumers of Black imagery, often cannot detach the idea of pessimism from the discourse surrounding our views of the African Diaspora: Black Americans. Due to the negative imagery of Black people that are frequently perpetuated throughout mass media, negative visual narratives of violence, darkness, brokenness, and ultimately damnation, interject distance between the viewer and Black people.

These images create negative generalities and the proliferation of these images desensitizes viewers, helping to reinforce the notion that Black people are undesirable, less than human, or “the other, incapable of Black love. If one does not study the history of how Black people have been depicted, it is easy to be co-opted into making work that continues the tradition, through cropping, objectifying the participant’s body in the photograph, through the use of lighting and improper use of colors.

When I first began making work, in high school, it was about proving that Black people existed beyond the boundaries of stereotypes. Then I became more focused on aesthetics and how I could display Black people’s bodies as abstract landscape-esque images. Then I stepped away from that, it didn't fit me anymore, I didn't get any gratification from what felt like reiterating the idea that Black people were simply bodies.

At one point in college, I was more interested in creating this mise en scènes that made the viewer purposefully and very clearly the voyeur. A lot of my studio work dealt with me exploring the conditions of the black peoples’ bodies in a society living under the false guise of a “post-colonial” or “post-modern world,” as we are bound by the interpellation of ideologies. I wanted to use a lot of symbolism and indexes at times to draw back to the history of Black people’s experiences in the US—using a Bible, a cross, portrait of JFK next to MLK, white barbies, the idea of having little representation of self—but aspiring to look like someone else at a young age. While showing this iconography with the severely cropped body, I wanted to have a discussion about all of these things! It felt too nail on the head for me.

To me, my work shows my own personal growth. When I arrive, most recently to my newest bodies of work with my partner, it feels the most honest. Putting myself in the work was challenging and very gratifying. Ultimately it is a culmination of all of the work I was creating, each series being a gesture towards the next, informing me and my work. These self-portraits “My Love and I” and “Then I remembered….” exist in the interstitial spaces of what is very real to me, two black people existing in space and what is folklore and myth, being absolutely free of responsibility, need or want. There is no longing, everything in the moment is perfect. I think it’s also two-fold, you know that it is me, someone, you know, but it could also be you, and that's what I think makes this moment more plausible and real.

My work as an artist depicts Black people in their essence, existing beyond the boundaries of stereotypes. Through the study of gesture and the exploration of autonomy of the Black body, I create a meditative space that lies in suspension between the historic past and current reality, grappling with ideas of vulnerability and interdependence through relationships with ideologies and iconography.

© Faith Couch. From The series Care Free Black Girls. 2017 — © Faith Couch. From The series *Care Free Black Girls.* 2017

Feinstein: Cultural memory and folklore are a big part of your work. Can you talk about some folklore/mythology that has influenced you and the images you make?

Couch: Folklore and traditions are integral parts of Black life, it’s how we survive. Storytelling through quilting, family photo albums, passing down adages, hymns songs, and photographs- maintaining that cultural memory informs the present and the future. Our own coded languages help us navigate and stay afloat. Black people are able to celebrate life by finding love and joy in the midst of destruction, state-sanctioned killing sprees, stock market crashes, and natural disasters. Our geist as a people helps keep us alive.

How we revere and have always had spiritual practices that help us connect with something bigger and greater than ourselves. In turn, Black people have always had this vexing relationship with Christianity. Our connection to nature has been an integral part of our survival, farming, growing plants and healing ourselves through food and herbs.

Feinstein: Congrats on the recent inclusion in New Black Vanguard, See in Black, and Visual Meditations. Has inclusion in these important projects and exhibitions changed or given context to how you think about your work?

Couch: Thank you! To be included in such monumental visions is always so humbling. In undergrad in 2018, I had the honor to intern with Annette Booth, the director of Exhibitions at the Aperture Foundation, through my photography program at MICA. Being in NY that summer changed my life. In July of 2019, I was asked to be in In Conversation: Visual Meditations on Black Masculinity, then in September of 2019, Annette emails me with news that Antwaun Sargent selected my image to be included in the New Black Vanguard exhibition and in this year, I was asked to be apart of the See In Black Collective.

It has all happened so fast and I have felt so overwhelmed with gratitude because I get to be able to share a big part of me with the world, moreover, it means that more people will be able to re-envision themselves. The crux of these projects and exhibitions is that Black people get to tell their own stories and create their own worlds through the means of photography.

Feinstein: What are you most excited about right now?

Couch: I’m excited to make work featuring my family and my parents because I admire them so much. This is such a rare time in life and every day I get to spend with them I’m very grateful. They have always been my greatest supporters so I’m excited to collaborate with them.

Faith Couch Creates a New Future of Black Love