Alex Christopher Williams’ new photobook Black Like Paul explores the complexities of race, masculinity, and what it means to pass as white.

A child of interracial marriage, Alex Christopher Williams stands astride two worlds - one white, one Black - each framed by race as a social, economic, and cultural construct.

Williams passes for white. Though the definition has expanded to include ethnicity, caste, social class, sexual orientation, and gender, from a genealogical perspective, passing describes biracial people who identify with or are perceived as belonging to a different racial group based on their appearance. Across the vast and violent span of American history, passing was a survival technique that granted some Black people access to education, employment, and relative safety before the law.

Black, Like Paul, Williams soon-to-be released book produced by Kris Graves Projects’ new imprint Monolith Editions, focuses on the photographer’s experience of navigating racial hybridity. Williams strives to understand his father Paul’s experiences as a Black man, and by extension, that of many men in his immediate and ancestral family and community. Looking at the book, readers may momentarily stand in Williams’ shoes, looking into a world that is familiar in some ways, and unknowable in others.

We recently spoke about going unnoticed in a world that regularly degrades the bodies of Black men and boys, and using photography to access heritage that is challenging to inhabit.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Alex Christopher Williams.