Clifford Prince King, Haircut, 2019.
“Most of my work is about expressing sexuality and furthering my understanding of blackness within people my age in the US, and about queerness—this kind of navigating and figuring out our place in the world through a visual diary of the everyday. Most of it is pretty ongoing. It’s almost documentary style. I capture moments from within and they progress as I progress within life.
The majority of the people in my photos are friends, pretty close friends. Depending on the photograph, some of them are strangers that I’ve met through one-time interactions, but mostly close friends, or people that I’ve reached out to, and we’ve talked about blackness and try to create images that we wish to see that we don’t often see.
My favourite of these images is probably the one with the boys under the blanket. I was shooting a film and then I took a photo as well. They are two really good friends that are in a relation- ship, and it was just really beautiful to capture that image because it’s not really traditional as far as portraiture. I feel like I tried something a little different. A lot of those photos are very special in their own way.”
Left: Communion, 2019. Right: Boys in Pearls, 2019.
"It is the little things that we do everyday to make ourselves feel like we are beautifying ourselves in the best way we know how, whether that’s applying a layer of shea butter onto our skin, or you know, the gloss on our lips, the pearl on our earring.”
A lot of the time we don’t really see black bodies—black gay men—in a glamorous viewpoint, so I try to put my lens towards that, or highlight those moments that seem very glamorous on people who don’t really get that light very often. With Boys in Pearls (2019), it’s very contrasting—I’ve done the same thing with milk: the white of the milk and the pearls against dark skin. I think that in itself tells a story as far as what is al- lowed for us to hold as a race.
I piece together things that are around my room that seem striking to me visually. I try to place some things that have historic context, like in the still life—there are some pearls and I think there is an image of Richard Bruce Nugent, who was a very famous gay poet and he often had a very glamorous visual aesthetic. I put together things that revolve around blackness and queerness, and put them together in pieces to tell the story of that time, but also to make it relevant to the time now, and that’s what I kind of deal with a lot in my photo- graphs. There are kinds of codes or nods to blackness like hair grease that our parents would have used, or a bottle of rush, commonly seen amongst the gay community—just little things that we can relate to, put together to make a grander kind of ceremonious altar, if you will.
Left: Poster Boys, 2019. Right: Untitled (Heels), 2020.
“A lot of my inspiration comes from films, cinematography and the quietness of moments that you don’t really take note of that are beautiful. City of God (2002) is a really beautiful film that really changed my perspective in terms of the cinematography and storytelling. Kerry James Marshall is a really great painter who I love. He tells stories that are within the black community often within poor apartment complexes, and uplifts black experience to make it glamorised but with notes of poverty and struggle within the art itself.
I think glamour is a kind of idea that we have in our heads that makes something that we do everyday which doesn’t seem glamorous, but from the outside looking in it is something that we do to make ourselves feel better. And when we see it outside of ourselves, it is the little things that we do everyday to make ourselves feel like we are beautifying ourselves in the best way we know how, whether that’s applying a layer of shea butter onto our skin, or you know, the gloss on our lips, the pearl on our earring. I guess it’s the way that we try to make ourselves feel good.
I hope my photos convey the feeling of being seen, like an idea that there is a lot of beauty surrounding us, and just to take a minute to really invest in the people that are around us, and the things that we do daily to make ourselves feel better. Just little things that we don’t see that other people do see and that is beautiful, I suppose. A lot of the things that I am taking photos of are things that we see all the time, but once you highlight it and boost up that specific image and pinpoint it with people that we want to see in it, with people that we do admire versus people that we see in the magazines, that in itself can be self-validating and create something that is of more importance within your community and within yourself.”
Left: Malcolm, 2019. Right: A Comb and Weed, 2017.
All photos by Clifford Prince King. Words: Clifford Prince King. Interview by Kathryn O’Regan
This article originally appeared in SLEEK 65, out now.
Alongside the launch of our spring issue putting glamour under the microscope, SLEEK is dropping our “No one cares if you dress up now” tees. Available to purchase here.