PLATTSBURGH — Terrence A. Reese trades the Windy City for the Lake City on Tuesday, when he comes to town for two events in support of his upcoming exhibit, “REFLECTIONS: Intimate Portraits of Iconic African Americans” at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum.
A reception celebrating this work will be held Thursday, March 27 in the Burke Gallery, Myers Building from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Catch his Artist Lecture 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 26 in Yokum Hall, Room 202.
Reese is raising $1 million for a second volume of “Reflections.” He’s seven images deep. For the first volume, he did 82 portraits. Like his first volume, his subjects suggest five names of people he should photograph.
BACKSTORY
How he made his way as a teen from Chicago to New York City and back is a tale that he winds deftly as old-school film on a stainless steel sprocket.
His photographic lineage and influences include Gordon Parks, James Van Der Zee, Adger Cowans, Tony Barboza, and Albert Watson.
But, his photog journey began in Chicago. Two degrees below 0.
“I had two pair of long underwear,” he said.
“And I went to the football coach and I said, ‘Is there any chance I can go pro?’ I walked out of the office. I think they were still laughing. So I said, ‘This is my last day. It’s too cold.’ But I still like the cheerleaders.”
At Simeon Vocation High School, Reese was an architectural drafting major, and the same teacher taught photography.
“And he knew my motive,” Reese said.
“He was like, ‘You’re really not serious.’ He gave me a roll of film, a sprocket, a canister, and a top. He said put the film on the sprocket, put it in the canister and put the top on it. He closed the door, and I couldn’t see my hands. I did it. I gave it to him, and he was like ‘You’re serious.’ I said, yes I’m serious. Yes, I can do this.”
MAJOR PIVOT
Reese shot with a Nikon outfitted with a 50mm lens.
He got a scholarship to Southern Illinois to study architectural drafting, but he switched his major to photography.
“It was kind of a rough road, but I passed my classes and made it by the skin of my teeth,” he said.
“Visually, my work was much better than most of the people in my class and my professor, I think it was three months before I graduated, he suggested that I move to New York. He said you will never work in Chicago. It’ll never happen. I said why now, I’m about to graduate.”
His professor said he could make it in NYC, despite the fact he had never been there.
“He said contact this man, Tony Barboza, and he will give you a job,” Reese said.
“I called my mother. I said I’m moving to New York when I graduate. She said okay. The day I graduated, she said, ‘Are you still going to New York?’ I said, ‘As soon as I walk off that stage.’”
SIT DOWN
Reese got behind the wheel of Gloria, his bright green ‘71 Karmann Ghia convertible that Friday in 1987. On Monday, he had an appointment with Anthony “Tony” Barboza, who had made his own pilgrimage to NYC at 19 to study with fashion photographer Hugh Bell.
Adger Cowans, another Black commercial photographer, introduced Barboza to the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photogs who critiqued each other’s work and exhibited together.
Reese and Barboza hit it off, but it took a minute.
“We got used to each other,” he said.
“In my mind, I was looking for a photo studio, but that’s not where he was. In between him being on the phone, I asked him for identification. I had come to far to be speaking to a stranger. He said to the person on the phone, ‘This fool just asked me for identification. Let me call you back.’”
Barboza’s office reeked of smoke. Ashtrays were filled with cigarette stubs. Reese was clean, dressed up, and Barboza looked like a hobo.
“He comes around the desk and looks at me and says, ‘Sit down,’” he said.
“And, he explains life to me. and almost one year to the day, I looked just like him. Cowboy boots. Blue jeans that looked like they could stand up. T-shirt. It was an interesting metamorphosis to go from – getting your haircut every week to now having locks that were blonde. You don’t see the same people every day, so who cares what you wear?”
Those jeans and those boots and that T-shirt, its new to them.
“And it’s less to wash,” he said.
“There you go. It becomes about your skill not so much how you dress. I flourished in New York. I had a great time. I photographed more hip-hop artists than anyone. I had three studios. Then, I invested all my money in ‘Reflections’ because my mentor told me I couldn’t do it. I would never get the opportunity to photograph the people the way I did. While he was talking to me, he was cooking ginseng on the stove in an 800 square foot studio.”
SMOKE & MIRRORS
Reese was upset that Cowans shuttered his vision.
“I had just left the opening of ‘I Dream A World,’ and I thought the photographs were just terrible,” he said.
“The next day when I met with him he said, ‘You would never get that opportunity.’”
The ginseng was overpowering the studio, and Reese couldn’t breathe. He tried to get to the windows and noticed a mirror between them.
“There was no path to the window, but I could see him in the mirror,” he said.
“So, I turned around and I said, ‘You know what, I need some air. I got to go.’ Then I stopped and looked at him in the mirror, and I said, ‘If I can get you and all of this stuff in the mirror, it’ll tell a hell of a story about you.’”
Reese returned the next day and recreated everything of the day before in Cowans’ studio.
“I photographed him at the stove,” he said.
“You cannot tell he is at the stove in the photo, but you could tell it in the mirror. So he is standing in front of the stove. He’s prepared now. He is holding up little things in front of him because he’s an artist, so the whole place is full of art. Pictures. Photography.”
Cowans was his first Reflection image, and Barboza was his second. Once he perfected the concept, he asked icons to let him photograph them.
“The one of Dorothy Porter, people would be like she’s in another room,” he said.
“Where is the mirror? I said that’s not another room. I said that’s a mirror. That’s one of those mirrors in the old days. Before they walk out that door, there’s a huge mirror, so they could see themselves. She was sitting there with her legs crossed, and the beauty is I like to light. I like to walk into a room and light until it looks natural. With that you can’t have light in the mirror, for sure, because that is the way to hide the mirror because there’s no light. It takes like two hours to set the shot up.”
SECOND ‘SIT DOWN’
Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998), an innovative visual artist and educator, was one of the people who “straightened Reese up.”
“She is one of the greatest painters of all time, and her story was she gave her artwork to a white woman to enter into a contest at a major gallery in New York and she won,” he said.
“But she was unable to collect the prize because she was a Black woman. She was Black period. Years later, they did a retrospective of her work at the gallery to apologize for how they acted.”
Reese went into her home with the ‘tude and handed his portfolio to her.
“She flips through it and says, ‘I don’t like your composition,’” he recalled.
“I jumped up and said, ‘Call 911. Oh, my God, oh my God!’ She said, ‘What is wrong?’ I said, “Call 911. You have lost your mind.’ I pointed at my assistant, and she told my assistant, ‘Don’t move.’ Then, she told me to sit down. I said, ‘But, but, but… She said, “But nothing, boy, if you don’t sit down. I said, ‘You got a problem something is wrong with you. You need to be rushed to the hospital.’ She said, ‘If you don’t cut it out.’”
Jones told him that her studio was upstairs.
“I set up, handed her a Polaroid, and she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, and she began to cry. She said, ‘There’s my good friend, Picasso, and there’s my husband. Almost none of the subjects have been photographed like this before. When Lois saw the Polaroid, it clicked what she was doing. So she snapped her fingers, and she had the room rearranged because she knows this photograph is a reflection of her life and its going to outlive her. and she wants the things shown that she wants the things shown. When the room was finished, she just sat there.”
“Are you ready now?” Reese said.
“Go on. Go on,” Jones said.
“At that moment, I realized she respected what I was doing,” he said.
“Before, she didn’t understand. When she looked at the portfolio, she didn’t know to look for the people in the mirror.”
Faith Ringgold asked, “Boy, you shooting the back of my head?”
“I said, no, look in the mirror,” he said.
“Can you see the camera? Well, the camera can see you.”
Reese was on alert when he photographed United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“He stepped off the elevator, and I jumped back,” he said.
“He said, ‘Are you alright?’ I said, ‘I’m looking for the Secret Service. He said, ‘I can take you.’ I said, ‘Trust me, you will not have to take me. I will act just as nice and raised like my Momma taught me. There will be no beat down here.’ And, he laughed.”
Powell’s photograph includes images of academically outstanding inner city children, who were in a college sponsored at Columbia University.
“I photographed four of his kids in the photograph, and he’s reflected on the bookshelf,” Reese said.
“He wanted to show that these kids are a reflection of me. I was like, ‘Fine, no problem.’”
Reese replicated a similiar image for The DuSable Black History Museum and History Center in Chicago.
“There is a carving of the slave trade, and on a chair there is a mirror,” he said.
“I said this is missing something.”
There was a cluster of 4 and 5 year-olds near, so Reese asked their teacher if they could sit on the floor.
“One of the children put her hand on the chair, showing a connection with the mirror,” he said.
“And you see all these children looking at the carving of the slave trade.”