For Chiemeka Offor, images do more than crystallize a moment in time; they express care and form a living archive of Black life.

The New York–based Nigerian-American artist, surrealist photographer, and filmmaker moves seamlessly between self-portraiture, editorial photography, and experimental film to center Black women, Black families, and the beauty and nuance of the African diasporic experience. Ahead of Offor’s fourth annual Juneteenth Community Photo Booth in Prospect Park on Friday, I sat down with her to discover how creating images of Black families can become a vehicle for radical imagination, self-preservation, and, ultimately, love. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Vogue: The visual aesthetic of your images reminds me of the lineage of African portrait photography. What is your formal approach to photography, especially as related to this particular project?

Chiemeka Offor: In terms of my visual language as a photographer, color and light exist as layers. I have a very fantastical, surrealist approach to image-making. With the Juneteenth Community Photo Booth in Prospect Park, the format allows me to use the park as a backdrop and make it feel like an entirely different world. Usually I use a lot of color, but this year I wanted to work with neutrals, [including] brown curtains that are draped and a large bamboo hoop that says “Black Is Beautiful.”

A big visual inspiration is definitely African studio portraits. I went to see “Ideas of Africa” two weeks ago. I went to see Seydou Keïta’s show at the Brooklyn Museum. I not only love Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and African artists in the canon of African studio art, but also people like Ruth Ossai, who makes incredible images and refers to them as well. When you’re using the studio and the photo booth setup it can be very fantastical.

This is the fourth annual Juneteenth Community Photo Booth. What’s different about this year compared to previous years?

This year, we’re collaborating with Black-owned businesses and communities like Black Girls Who Bike and Black Women Photographers. I’m also excited to introduce a live scrapbooking aspect to the event, so people can build their own physical archive. People are going to get their portraits taken, they’re going to listen to good music, we’re going to have picnic blankets to be laid out. And I think the most important thing for me is this is a completely free event. I’m grateful to have sponsors and partners. That means that I do not have to charge anyone to enjoy this day and celebrate.

After you do something the first time, you’re still figuring it out, and we’re honestly actively still continuing to learn and build as we go. But I feel really confident this year and also just very grateful to document Black Joy.

I want to talk about the notion of self-portraiture in your work. What does it mean for you to capture images of yourself?

It really started because sometimes I wouldn’t have a model, or I would spend a lot of time alone, especially during COVID, and I would still want to find ways to live out these ideas. I do a lot of writing, I do a lot of journaling. When my journal wasn’t enough, I would put my tripod up and get in front of the camera. My work doesn’t have a rushed timeline—I make it for myself first. I’m looking for something or hoping to see something or understand myself better. For me, self-portraits start from a question—from wanting to see myself the way I am. And you can only do that through making your own image.

I feel less alone when I make a self-portrait and someone else sees something. I am able to connect with my community even when I’m taking images of myself. It’s a very healing feeling. I’m getting emotional about it because growing up as a young, Black girl in the US, you don’t always feel beautiful. A big part of my self-portraiture was showing myself that I mattered and deserved to be seen as well. A lot of people don’t realize how important someone’s image is until they’re gone. And Black people especially, we haven’t always had control of our own images, and the freedom to document our existence and to say, I am beautiful, I am worth looking at, and I’m worth remembering. To give this gift of remembering to those in my community and those beyond makes me so happy.

I think self-portraiture also allowed me to accept that I didn’t always have to present perfectly. I could be caught in in-between moments and discomfort and [with] questions that I didn’t have the answer to. It helped me move through understanding myself, my body, my existence.

Juneteenth represents something so important to our people, to American history, to history at large. It’s a time to celebrate and honor our past and educate ourselves and others. And while you’re a photographer who centers Black women, one of the things that I’m thinking about with some of the previous iterations of the Juneteenth Community Photo Booth is the imagery of Black families. Can you speak about that?

You don’t know how important someone’s image is until you don’t have the chance to take it. In my recent work, I’ve been doing a lot of maternity shoots, working with mothers. I have a very deep matrilineage and matriarchal line and I’ve been exploring that within my own family and others. I do a lot of street castings. I go into places and I find mothers or people who are expecting and I’m like, “Have you taken a portrait?” Or if there’s a newborn baby, I ask, “Have you documented your baby? Have you had a family photo before?” And especially during Juneteenth, we would encourage every Black person, but especially families, to get their photos taken because a lot of people would tell us, “This is our first professional family portrait.”

It’s incredible how accessible photography is, but I think the formal art of including everyone in a family portrait is not as common. It’s really important to document just any proof of the Black image, any form of Black existence and Black life, but especially Black families—the image of them that will last beyond our lifetime and be evidence of our existence, our love, our family.

Credits:
Co-founder, Photographer, and Creative Director: Chiemeka Offor
Producer + Public Relations: Amaka Nwokocha
Hoop Fabrication: Onyelukachukwu Haidome
Lighting Assistant: Beyoncé Rose
Production Assistant: Christine Forbes