Excerpt: Preserving the Family Album: Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-uA60AmCk
Deborah Willis is a photographer, a prolific one. She's published upwards of 20 books of her work and is viewed as a kind of icon in her field covering everything from the history of black photography to the Obamas. At a time when photography and the arts in general were largely dominated by white males, Willis emerged as something of a phenom. And if you already find out that you know her work you'll understand why in a moment. She's a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. And the talent in that family doesn't end with her.
Her son Hank Willis Thomas is a renowned artist in his own right, working in photography, video and installations with a similar focus on identity history and popular culture. His work's been exhibited around the world too, including the Guggenheim Bilbao, the National Gallery of Art in DC, and the Museum of Modern Art right here in New York City.
Deborah: I like to read the family album. I loved to look at the way that the women were dressed. I love the inscriptions. So I think the family album is really a central way for us to know about our memories and to tell stories. Later on I realized that in the larger society, no one actually looked at black families as a central way of knowing, a sense of being, or a sense of existence.
Hank: In 1968, during the Memphis Sanitation Workers March, a photographer, African-American photographer named Ernest Wither, photographed dozens of protesters holding signs that read, "I am a man." And I always reflected on that image with curiosity because there was a statement of collectivity when people were fighting segregation. After integration, it seemed to be a boastful statement and saying, "I'm the man." And I felt that there was progress in being able to be an individual, but also things that are lost when we don't see the benefits of collective struggle.
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LFExcerpt: Hip Chick Farms
Laura: I don't suppose it came up at that dinner because you were probably being very polite. But there are policy changes that would help businesses like yours. Can you talk about some of them? Because some of the people who might be watching might be people who are in government or who are in position to actually make some policy change. Rush Limbaugh wasn't right in saying there's money flowing to lesbian farmers.
Serafina: No.
Laura: But there could be.
Serafina: There could be, yes. Certainly. I think that our experience is limited. We've only been in the industry for 3 and a half years. I can't speak to it as an expert by any means.
Laura: But there are presumably things that could've been easier for you.
Serafina: Access to capital for rural businesses. That's where we actually did access our, the VC money came through a program that Secretary Vilsack created. We're very fortunate to have that access stream. There's a lot of people in rural communities, in agricultural communities that don't have access to those kinds of resources that's greatly needed.
Just even some of the regulations around the access to kill facilities and poultry processing and how that's ... Folks want to do things locally, and there's not an ability to do it. There's a huge need for changes and shifts for how people can create meat and poultry products on a local basis. It's kind of a globalized industry right now. It's very expensive to get into it.
When we started, we were like well how hard can it be, we'll make some chicken fingers. Then we learned about the USDA ...
Jen: We did a Kickstarter for $25,000. That's it. We're good. We're done.
Serafina: No. We needed millions.
Jen: That was less than a drop in the bucket.
Serafina: You need a huge access to capital to get into this particular industry.
Jen: Owning your own meat company is extremely expensive. We didn't know, and I'm shocked we're still here today.
Laura: Talk a little bit more about the sexism in the business. I think we all, clearly, if this election has taught us anything, need to talk more about the sexism that we're up against.