In 2018, photographer Adrian Octavius Walker completed We Matter, a series of portraits of Black men wearing various colors of velvet durags. The portraits are soft, stylized and empowering, breaking the stereotypes of Black masculinity often presented in popular media with bold, poppy and pastel colors.

“Black Virgin Mary,” an image from the series, was recently included in The National Portrait Gallery’s fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and exhibition American Portraiture Today, on display through August 20th, 2020, among the work of more than 40 artists and photographers whose work addresses race, police brutality, immigration, and citizenship.

Photographer Quinn Russell Brown, who also has a piece in the exhibition – a portrait of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson – speaks with the St. Louis-born, now Chicago-based artist about the higher meaning of a durag, the perspective that comes from personal experience, and the difference between photographing Black subjects and making work about Blackness.

Quinn Russell Brown in conversation with Adrian Octavius Walker