Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, dedicated to the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, was my dedication. “I’ve known rivers, I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older then the flow of human blood in human veins.”
“My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it’s lulled me to sleep. I look upon the Nile and raise the pyramids above it. I’ve heard of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers, ancient, dusty rivers.”
“My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” Langston Hughes.
Some of the images that I have produced are you know each one has a story of course. This woman is a woman who lives in South Carolina. The image here, these are her hands by the way. And this has happened, she used an old pot in her yard and it was an old rusty pot in her back, in the backyard. And I saw her hands and hands have always fascinated me, so seeing her hands and seeing this rusty pot, I said, whoa, veins that run through the blood, you know.
And I said, there’s a line goes, “Older then the flow of human blood in human veins”, my God, to see her, the blood, you could actually almost feel the blood running through her fingers and so, her old, her age, her hands, had stories, you could just tell, countless stories just by looking at her hands. And so to see this pot, it had also that character, that age and that weathering, what the combination. I said, “Can you hold this pot for me?” and we worked through different configurations.
This is my nephew here, and an old guy who was out on a street walking on a building. And the guy that was supposed to be the grandfather in this situation, didn’t show up. So I’m sitting there with my nephew, this great light, getting ready to lose the light and I’m like, oh I need to find an old guy, you know. So I run around the neighbor like, an old guy! And I run over to him, he’s got a hammer and whatever in his hand.
He’s like trying to knock down this, you know this window out of this building, you know excuse me, I got a kind of proposition for you. You want to make a couple dollars? Huh, he said, oh yes. I’m doing this photo shoot and I need you to play a granddad. A granddad. Well yeah my nephew here, I need you to be his granddad and you need to fish on this pond across the street over here.
Okay, and I convinced him and he came over, sat down, he was great. And he sat there and he played granddad and then actually he didn’t want to leave because he was having so much fun.
