About 40 years ago, photographer Amani Willett’s father acquired a deed for the land that was home to Joseph Plummer, one of the United States’ most famous hermits. Upon learning of this mysterious news, Willett set to create a fragmented photographic narrative, piecing together the story of Plummer’s existence and experience using a mix of found images, accounts from local archives and Willett’s own photographs.
The resulting project, which is also a book published by Overlapse Books in 2017, is an astutely edited, engrossing visual journey. It’s a historical telephone game that not only plays to the confusion of truth and narrative structure, but speaks to how stories, family histories, and legends build, twist and evolve over time.
© Amani Willett, from his series The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer
© Amani Willett from Street Series
This work builds on Willet’s constantly winding approach to visual storytelling. It started with straightforward street photographs and has grown into a fragmented presentation of history and mythology, continuously shifting shape from project to project.
After selecting Willett on the Daylight 2018 shortlist, we spoke about his unfolding path.
Jon Feinstein: How did you first get into photography?
Amani Willett: It might sound strange but from an early age (maybe 9 or 10) I often thought that if I ever tried making photographs I wouldn’t be able to stop. We would go on family vacations and even though I wasn’t taking pictures, I was making mental pictures in my head - like practice pictures. And so on some level I put off making pictures because I knew it would become an obsession.
JF: When did this turn into “real” photography?
AW: In 1997 when I was about the graduate from college. I had been an African-American Studies and psychology major and had just finished up my thesis. A few days after turning in my thesis I was down at the school bookstore and came across a Eli Reed’s book “Black in America.” I picked up the book, sat down on the floor and spent the next hour mesmerized.
What amazed me was how the book used pictures to talk about the same ideas I had just written about in my thesis. This discovery came at just the right moment – I was tired of writing about cultural and social issues even though I was still interested in pursuing them. I’d never considered that visual language could address the same issues as the written word and with a force and power that could be more immediate. So I came to photography first from a social/cultural perspective, not a fine arts perspective.
Jon Feinstein: How did you first get into photography?
Amani Willett: It might sound strange but from an early age (maybe 9 or 10) I often thought that if I ever tried making photographs I wouldn’t be able to stop. We would go on family vacations and even though I wasn’t taking pictures, I was making mental pictures in my head - like practice pictures. And so on some level I put off making pictures because I knew it would become an obsession.
JF: When did this turn into “real” photography?
AW: In 1997 when I was about the graduate from college. I had been an African-American Studies and psychology major and had just finished up my thesis. A few days after turning in my thesis I was down at the school bookstore and came across a Eli Reed’s book “Black in America.” I picked up the book, sat down on the floor and spent the next hour mesmerized.
What amazed me was how the book used pictures to talk about the same ideas I had just written about in my thesis. This discovery came at just the right moment – I was tired of writing about cultural and social issues even though I was still interested in pursuing them. I’d never considered that visual language could address the same issues as the written word and with a force and power that could be more immediate. So I came to photography first from a social/cultural perspective, not a fine arts perspective.
© Amani Willett from his series A Parallel Road
JF: Knowing this, it’s interesting for me to look at your various projects – some of which are more straightforward than others, from a bird’s eye view. They’re a mix of more immediate work, like your street photos, and several projects that play with history, how we understand it, and the blurriness of (written + visual!) storytelling. What makes it all hang together for you?
AW: Good question and it requires considerable explanation.
I see my current practice as photo-based projects that are lyrical transformations of reality. They investigate history, family, memory and place. I use a multifaceted approach that combines photographs, historical documents and text to fuse instinct with structure and create work that operates in the murky area between reality and fiction, history and myth.
What I like about this way of working is that this ambiguous space can sharpen our understanding of the world by creating a dialogue between unexpected images and ideas. For example, protest images can be juxtaposed with family pictures, modern landscapes with historical portraits, computer composites with hand-erased pictures. I’m not simply trying to document or record, but to create rich, atmospheric, impressionistic stories. All of my most recent projects begin with strong personal connections which I then find ways to connect to more universal conversations about relationships and the modern human condition.
AW: Good question and it requires considerable explanation.
I see my current practice as photo-based projects that are lyrical transformations of reality. They investigate history, family, memory and place. I use a multifaceted approach that combines photographs, historical documents and text to fuse instinct with structure and create work that operates in the murky area between reality and fiction, history and myth.
What I like about this way of working is that this ambiguous space can sharpen our understanding of the world by creating a dialogue between unexpected images and ideas. For example, protest images can be juxtaposed with family pictures, modern landscapes with historical portraits, computer composites with hand-erased pictures. I’m not simply trying to document or record, but to create rich, atmospheric, impressionistic stories. All of my most recent projects begin with strong personal connections which I then find ways to connect to more universal conversations about relationships and the modern human condition.
JF: How’d you get to this point in thinking about your work?
AW: My road to this current place was a long journey. I think I can speak for many artists when I say that where I had my first experience in the arts has had a deep and lasting impact. My first exposure to the world of photography was working at Magnum Photos for four years. It’s where I learned about the photographic process and to see and think about how photography relates to the world.
AW: My road to this current place was a long journey. I think I can speak for many artists when I say that where I had my first experience in the arts has had a deep and lasting impact. My first exposure to the world of photography was working at Magnum Photos for four years. It’s where I learned about the photographic process and to see and think about how photography relates to the world.
© Amani Willett, from his series The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer
© Amani Willett from Street
JF: When I think of Magnum historically, I first think of straight/ linear documentary photography – a bit different from a lot of your recent work.
AW: While I went to Magnum with a strong interest in social and documentary photography, after a short time it quickly became apparent that I was less interested in the straightforward documentary and journalistic work that was coming out of the agency than the photographers who were using the camera to create their own visual language and framing the world in new and exciting ways - people like Henri Cartier Bresson who compositions and framing of the world was astounding.
AW: While I went to Magnum with a strong interest in social and documentary photography, after a short time it quickly became apparent that I was less interested in the straightforward documentary and journalistic work that was coming out of the agency than the photographers who were using the camera to create their own visual language and framing the world in new and exciting ways - people like Henri Cartier Bresson who compositions and framing of the world was astounding.
It was also the first time I saw how the use of color could radically alter the mood, feeling and meaning of photographs and Alex Webb, more than any other photographer, taught me not only that color photography opens up a new and exciting aspect of the photographic language but that the act of seeing itself is something that is in flux - constantly being negotiated by the photographer’s relationship to the world.
There were a number of Magnum photographers whose primary objective was not simply documenting but rather using the world as raw source material from which to create photographs. They seemed to be making images from nothing rather than relying on having a really interesting subject or some gruesome battle. They were out of “The Street” making images.
There were a number of Magnum photographers whose primary objective was not simply documenting but rather using the world as raw source material from which to create photographs. They seemed to be making images from nothing rather than relying on having a really interesting subject or some gruesome battle. They were out of “The Street” making images.
© Amani Willett from Street
© Amani Willett from Street
JF: I think my introduction to your work was actually your street photos…
AW: Street photography was where I started… When I left Magnum I started shooting my own pictures on the street. I Had a Leica M6 and had fallen head over heels in love with Kodachrome 200. I was thrilled to be photographing anything and everything. I was photographing as Garry Winogrand said “to see what the world looked like photographed.” Successful art should propose a new way to understand the world in which we live and photography gave me a great way to make a viewer challenge their own assumptions about visual perception.
Street photography provided me the opportunity to explore different sorts of photographic possibilities but there came a point where it left me wanting more. I knew I needed to push myself further or I’d lose interest in photographing. I was looking for a way to take my intuitive way of making pictures and mold the images into more substantial projects. And that’s when I discovered the book form. Thinking about my pictures as pieces of fragmented narratives that could be explored within the confines a book was the next big moment for me and my progression as an artist.
AW: Street photography was where I started… When I left Magnum I started shooting my own pictures on the street. I Had a Leica M6 and had fallen head over heels in love with Kodachrome 200. I was thrilled to be photographing anything and everything. I was photographing as Garry Winogrand said “to see what the world looked like photographed.” Successful art should propose a new way to understand the world in which we live and photography gave me a great way to make a viewer challenge their own assumptions about visual perception.
Street photography provided me the opportunity to explore different sorts of photographic possibilities but there came a point where it left me wanting more. I knew I needed to push myself further or I’d lose interest in photographing. I was looking for a way to take my intuitive way of making pictures and mold the images into more substantial projects. And that’s when I discovered the book form. Thinking about my pictures as pieces of fragmented narratives that could be explored within the confines a book was the next big moment for me and my progression as an artist.
© Amani Willett from Disquiet
© Amani Willett from Disquiet
JF: Your series Disquiet was made in 2013, a meditation on the anxieties of raising a child within a climate of social unrest. Has the past could years/ Trump presidency give new insights into that work or your practice in general?
AW: It’s made me think more about cycles and the fact that we can’t predict the future. When I was working on Disquiet I was thinking a lot about universal cyclical themes: family, life, death, social and societal unrest. But also about new challenges such as climate change. The book could reference many periods of history but at the same time was about that particular moment.
What I thought was a low from which we would emerge and grow stronger from as a country was proven wrong by the Trump presidency. The great recession was a time of grave concern for most people but what’s happening now is different. There is an intense psychological toll now that feels distinct, and generally, while the economy is technically in good shape it feels like we are way worse off as a country as a whole.
I’ve been thinking about that work a lot and wondering if it’s possible to revisit it or if it would just seem like “Disquiet 2.” I also wonder if I replaced the image of Obama in Disquiet with Trump if it would resonate with our current moment. I am currently making work that responds to the events over the past few years but I am yet unsure if, when or how I will show it.
AW: It’s made me think more about cycles and the fact that we can’t predict the future. When I was working on Disquiet I was thinking a lot about universal cyclical themes: family, life, death, social and societal unrest. But also about new challenges such as climate change. The book could reference many periods of history but at the same time was about that particular moment.
What I thought was a low from which we would emerge and grow stronger from as a country was proven wrong by the Trump presidency. The great recession was a time of grave concern for most people but what’s happening now is different. There is an intense psychological toll now that feels distinct, and generally, while the economy is technically in good shape it feels like we are way worse off as a country as a whole.
I’ve been thinking about that work a lot and wondering if it’s possible to revisit it or if it would just seem like “Disquiet 2.” I also wonder if I replaced the image of Obama in Disquiet with Trump if it would resonate with our current moment. I am currently making work that responds to the events over the past few years but I am yet unsure if, when or how I will show it.
