thegreenmagazine.com34 June 2009

ART & C

ULTU

RE

In a universe of mesmerizing polychro-

matic hues, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe

captures the world in two colors—black

and white. Her photography is comprised

of images textured by muted tones that

summon the observer to see themselves

within the piece. From a wedding day pictorial to the

lowering of a casket, her work limns the spectrum of

life. Moutoussamy-Ashe’s portfolio expands over four

decades and continues to influence new generations

of photographers.

For the multitude she inspires, her muse is

usually overlooked. “I love light. It fills me and I

respond to it,” Moutoussamy-Ashe says while sit-

ting next to the giant window in her Upper East

Side studio. “One of the things I regret about this

period of time in my life—when I’m so busy—is

that the light is there, but I’m always going some

place.” Timing is everything. Her rigorous schedule

of lectures and exhibition openings makes sponta-

neous, “photography only” days elusive. “It’s very

important to be present, to be here and now. That is

when you really experience light,” she says. Ever the

apt pupil, Moutoussamy-Ashe is relearning how to

capture that ‘light’.

A recent convert to digital photography, she sees

the benefits of the new medium. The time it once took

to develop film shot with her Hasselblad is now cut

in half by the instantaneous results of her pixilated

Leica. Her studio also mirrors that change. The top-

of-the-line Mac sits adjacent to her quaint darkroom.

Although the new methods are less time consuming,

she remains dedicated to the totality of the process. “I

could do all night sessions in the darkroom,” she says.

“Once you’re in there, you’re in there. You get into a

groove. And I make it a point to carve out the time to

do just black and white photography.”

Witnessing Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe interact

with a newly-schooled photographer is a learning

experience for all involved. Her devotion to organic

photography is visible in her living room. “Oh and

look at this one,” she says pointing at a photograph

by Cartier-Bresson. Working her way along the

wall—through Stewart, Kertész and on to Lyon—she

breaks down the techniques of each visionary. She

never preaches, but merely imparts the salience of

knowing the fundamentals. Technology is no substi-

tute for talent.

The daughter of an interior designer and architect,

this Chicago native knows form. Her artistry first

took shape while she attended New York’s prestigious

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and

Art. “Being in an art school, everyone wanted to go

to Europe to study art history. But I decided to go to

Africa,” says Moutoussamy-Ashe. Her pilgrimage to

Ghana’s Cape Coast opened her eyes to the genesis of

the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

“Seeing the fishing communities scattered on the

coast really stayed with me,” she recounts. “Then

I wondered what happened to the Africans once

they arrived to the coast of America.” Her curios-

ity was further provoked by her friend, Vertamae

Grosvenor. Grosvenor, poet and author of Vibration

Cooking or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, suggested

that Moutoussamy-Ashe visit South Carolina’s Sea

Islands. The visit not only answered her question,

but sparked the inspiration for one of Moutoussamy-

Ashe’s most ambitious projects. Daufuskie Island

became the subject.

“Some people see [Daufuskie Island] as something

nice and cute,” says Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell, native

of nearby Hilton Head Island and authority on Gullah

culture. “The people who live there struggle to get on

and off of the Island because of its isolation. So they

see it through a different lens.” A lens rarely explored

by the world outside of Daufuskie. The Island’s roots

extend back to Africa. Descendants of those taken in

bondage from Gambia, Senegal and Guinea, they kept

the traditions intact between generations. The Island

was purchased from plantation owners by freed slaves

creating one of the first black antebellum communi-

ties in America. With limited access to the other Sea

Islands and mainland South Carolina, the isolation

allowed Gullah folkways and oral tradition to become

the norm. Central to this process of cultural retention

is the Gullah language. It is a mixture of Caribbean

dialects and the Krio language from West Africa.

While reaffirming to the inhabitants of the Island, the

language creates a barrier for many outsiders.

Moutoussamy-Ashe arrived to Daufuskie in

1977 with Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell as her liaison.

However, residents were tentative in offering the

photographer a warm reception. “The people are so

close knit that if it wasn’t for Emory; I don’t think

they would’ve opened up to me the way they did,”

she recalls. “They would speak the Gullah language

to him, but would never speak it around me. There

were even times when I couldn’t pick up my camera

because I knew it was an invasion of their privacy.”

Moutoussamy-Ashe found solace in the home of Suzie

Smith, a native Daufuskian, and soon her immersion

in the community began.

Over the next two years, her sabbaticals to the

Island proved to be invaluable. She was befriended

by most, but the question still arose: “Why are you

taking pictures of us?” Hurricane David erased all

doubt. The hurricane leveled one of the Island’s oldest

prayer houses. Moutoussamy-Ashe captured the edi-

fice before it was reduced to rubble. She showed the

picture to the community and the answer became

clear—to preserve the Island’s history.

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s Daufuskie Island

was a character study of the remote community.

Originally published in 1982, this ground-breaking

photo essay was a compilation of photos taken over

five years. “I think what Jeannie did was rather fore-

sighted,” Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell says about the

book. “You go there now and that entire landscape has

changed. My memory is one thing, but seeing and

having it for prosperity is so great. I wish someone

would’ve done the same for Hilton Head.” Like many

of the Sea Islands, Daufuskie has become terra firma

for the real-estate minded opportunist. The acquisi-

tion of land has forced many of the Island’s original

residents to move elsewhere. With the change, sump-

tuous villas now line the beach and acres of lavish

fairways dominate the inland.

For Moutoussamy-Ashe, each image is indel-

ible. Her deep cache of negatives and contact sheets

allowed her to retrace the artistic path she travelled

decades prior. “What was jumping out at me from

these contact sheets that I hadn’t seen then—when

I thought I was getting these great shots—is that I

really didn’t know what I was seeing,” she says, while

her index fingers trace a line of images atop a wooden

table. “When I was 25-years-old and started photo-

graphing these people, I was not a mother. But I pho-

tographed the children, who are now in their thirties,

The LightJeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe

uses her muse to inform and inspireby laurence bass

35

and I photographed their family lifestyle. Then I real-

ized how much I had changed.” The journey down

this road eventually led her to create the framework of

Daufuskie Island: 25th Anniversary Edition.

The special edition is teeming with 110 photo-

graphs, many unreleased, which offer a pristine view

of the Island and its people. “I wanted to be true to

the project,” she maintains. “I wanted both the people

who live [on Daufuskie] now and those who left the

Island to see how it was.” Her due diligence was

rewarded. In 2007, she received Essence’s Literary

Award in the area of Photography for the book. While

the historical significance of her in depth study of the

Island continues to grow, her philosophy on preserva-

tion starts at home.

“Every family needs a documentarian,” she says

while sitting in front of the 25-foot bookcase she

calls ‘Arthur’s Mind’. The case, bearing titles rang-

ing from Paul Roberson Speaks to If Beale Street Could

Talk, belonged to her late husband and tennis legend,

Arthur Ashe. The notes of this true American intel-

lect are etched in the margins of these texts. Some

are full sentences while others are cryptic fragments.

“I can only image what this means,” she laughingly

says while trying to understand one of his inscrip-

tions. Moutoussamy-Ashe paints a picture of the

often tight-lipped Grand Slam Champion that many

spectators never witnessed from the grandstand.

“When he became a father, he just went crazy over

her,” she says about his reaction to the birth of their

daughter Camera. “He was doing all the silly things

that fathers do.” Camera, meaning “room of light” in

Latin, became the focal point of her next project.

Before Arthur Ashe’s death in 1993, due to compli-

cations from contracting hiv from a blood transfusion,

Moutoussamy-Ashe documented the changing rela-

tionship between him and Camera in the book Daddy

and Me. The text takes readers through both the good

and bad days during his latter years of life. “That’s my

family so I held it close to my heart,” she says. “I did

not do it initially as a book. It became something very

important for parents to use as a vehicle to discuss not

just aids, but illness with their children.”

From whence the light comes, Moutoussamy-Ashe

is ready to embrace it. Daddy and Me, like Daufuskie

Island, is another example of her overall commitment

to speaking to an audience via the camera’s lens.

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe

Photos by Ryan Kobane for The Green Magazine“One of the things I regret about this period of time in my life –when I’m so busy– is that the light is there, but I’m always going some place.”

thegreenmagazine.com36 June 2009