© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

Your first monograph Untitled was published this year for Capricious editions. It's a photographic narration on black diaspora, exploring themes like identity, family, and everyday precariousness. The book is divided into three parts: There (Yankee); Untitled or Again, And Again, And Again, And Again; Untitled Part II & III (We all have to make compromises). Can you tell us about the structure of your book and what are the main themes for each chapter?

Sasha Phyars (SP): Each section was originally its own body of work. For the publishing of the book, Capricious (Anika Sabin and Sophie Morner) suggested that I put it all together as one book. There (Yankee) is about returning to the home of my parents in Trinidad and Tobago, and trying my best to be a Trinidadian and failing. I think I wanted to understand myself as not an American. But of course, I am an American (and also, not an American). Growing up my cousins used to call me Yankee because of my accent. So this work was an exploration of Trinidad as a young adult and trying to make sense of it.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

Untitled or Again and Again, and Again and Again, is work I made during my first year of grad school at Cornell University. During that time I began photographing parties thrown by all black fraternities and sororities (the Alpha Phi Alphas and the Alpha Kappa Alphas) at Cornell. Cornell had a big greek life, and I didn’t know anything about that so I just went to these parties and photographed them. I was used to partying because my friends were in the nightlife scene in NYC, and we also partied together in college. I went to a predominantly white institution (PWI) and every weekend my friends and I used to rage. I knew what a release it was, so when I got to grad school and I was doing that grad school scramble to make work, I knew that somewhere there had to be some black people dancing on campus and I wanted to photograph it.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

I mixed those images with images from parties I went to in NYC, in particular, RAGGA NYC thrown by Chris Udemzue (also an artist/performer), which was a queer party for Caribbean diasporic people as well as Latin American/Latinx peoples. I also included images from a vogue ball I attended in Philadelphia. I wanted to put all the images together because I was going to all those spaces around the same time. Though, I must acknowledge that this work does not address the ways in which queer people are often treated in straight/hetero dance spaces. However, I think I wanted to make a point that these two spaces overlap, often without one realizing it.

Untitled Part II & III (We all have to make compromises), is very bluntly about death. But death in the way that it can make you hyperaware of life. This work was definitely made around the backdrop of the protests, shooting, deaths, murders, and executions of black people specifically in North America during the past 5 years, but really it is more about the continual grief one lives with while being black. The relentlessness of living with the mundanity of grief, and the ongoing struggle for black life. My interest was in seeing people, spending time with them, and photographing them in their spaces while they are living.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

In your pictures, we can see the everyday life of black people in Trinidad, the US, Canada, and England. The perspective gives us a sense of intimacy with the people portrayed. It is not a reportage at all, but a positioning from someone who lives inside the reality of pictures. Do you have something more to say about this? Is yours a political positioning too?

SP: My position is always political. But to be specific, I am a black person, a member of the African Diaspora spending time with, and being in the presence of other members of the African Diaspora (black people). I am not doing reportage in the sense of taking a journalism-centered approach to photographing other people. I am a black person taking photographs of other black people for joy of it, but I am also putting them into the world, which means they will always be in the context of the political positioning of black people in the world. I make photos of black people and put them back into the world, and the world is racist, so the work is always political. Because race, among other things, is political.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III" 

What is your formal education? How it influenced your photographic approach in Untitled?

SP: I went to undergrad at Bard College in upstate New York. They have a very good photography program. During the time that I attended the photography program it focused on a mainly in a post modern, mainly Eurocentric which I suspect was influenced by the Bauhaus, approach in some senses, but it was a liberal art school too. So I took classes in other subjects. I think I was very formally or compositionally influenced by my education.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

What does diaspora mean for you? What are the pictures you think can show the best the everyday life of second generations of black people?

SP: Diaspora means to me that I can go almost anywhere in the world, find a person that looks like me (black), and know that our histories are shared. I am interested in connecting, photographically, a shared history, A black history. I think that photographs which purposefully intersects with black history are important to see. Of course, as I say this statement, it is important to know that all history is black history.

© Sasha Phyars-Burgess from the series "Untitled Part II & III"

What do you think about postcolonialism from a diasporic point of view?

SP: There are two quotes that I got from a Sylvia Wynter reading by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal that can answer this better than me. “It is the opinion of many black writers, I among them, that the western aesthetic has run its course. We advocate a cultural revolution in art and ideas in fact we what we need is a whole new system o ideas.” Larry Neal 1971

The idea that western thought might be exotic if viewed from another landscape never presents itself to most westerners. - Amiri Baraka

What are your future projects?

SP: I hope to start traveling safely soon. I am currently the inaugural fellow for the Stanley Greene Fellowship with Noor Images, so I look forward to working on a project with them.

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LINKS
Sasha Phyars-Burgess (website)