In his book The Best of Simple, Langston Hughes depicts a fictional Harlem resident, Jesse B. Semple, a freethinker, charmed by—but serious about—his view of life in Harlem. Originally written as a newspaper column for the Chicago Defender, Semple’s stories about the Harlem community of the time are full of folk philosophies on love, death, religion and friendships set against the streets of Harlem.
In this work, I attempt to weave Hughes’s narrative of an imagined past into my contemporary photos, to evoke the beauty and spirituality of cultural memory. My photography in Harlem on Sunday afternoons revisits the Langston Hughes world of Jesse B. Semple’s Harlem. I am intrigued by Hughes’s ability to describe his love for the Harlem community and to express it through the voice of an imagined character. As was the case with Jesse B. Semple, the contemporary reality that I find—a complex web of politics, race and identity—is not so simple at all. My camera unravels these complex tales, offering a visual response to Hughes’s narrator that focuses on public art found on Harlem streets.