black people

As we sit in Gerald Cyrus’ upstairs office, we snack greedily from a box of sugar-free oatmeal raisin cookies, our favorite treat when printing at the house that holds the bulk of his sprawling archive and taut darkroom in North Philadelphia. For the last two years I’ve been visiting this house, poring over box after massive box of shimmering silver gelatin prints, learning printing techniques, and editing Gerald’s debut monograph, “Uptown Odyssey,” published in October by TBW Books.

I first met Gerald at the end of 2024, after coming across a Cafe Royal booklet of some of his photographs at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. I posted about the pleasure I took in the work — the inky, jazzy perfection of these bombastic photographs — and Gerald and I struck up a conversation. He told me that he was based in Philadelphia and I was surprised because at the time I was living there too. He invited me around for a studio visit and from there an unexpected friendship blossomed.

In the photography world today — especially as it pertains to the photo book — there is a stunning lack of representation for Black photographers. Honestly, if you browse the shelves of any art book store today you would think that Black people only existed as subject matter, never as storytellers. This kind of excision, this near total erasure of the Black voice, can turn one toward madness, certainly toward bitterness. Gerald, miraculously, is a total delight. He’s funny, charming, excitable and curious and his love of this medium remains largely unblemished.

Gioncarlo Valentine, “Sifting through the archive,” Philadelphia, 2024.

Whether it be his joyful photographs of families in Ghana and Brazil, his pictures of sleepy passengers on his cross-country trips on the Greyhound bus, his images of his extended family down in New Orleans, or his remarkably tender portraits of his hometown of L.A. in the 1980s, Gerald’s archive is a lush, captivating look at life wherever he finds it, rendered with curiosity, patience and care.

After our printing and our munching, I was excited to sit down for a conversation with him about Los Angeles, mentorship, cultural preservation and to think on what it means to champion the work of one’s elders and help steward it to a new, eager generation.

Gioncarlo Valentine: What was your photographic community like coming up in L.A.?

Gerald Cyrus: I was very fortunate in that I was able to discover a group of photographers based out of Leimert Park at a gallery called the Black Gallery. It was started by Roland Charles, Calvin Hicks, Donald Bernard and Gil Garner, and also the photographer Willie Middlebrook was an important person who I met there. They gave me the opportunity to exhibit for the very first time and gave me a chance to meet working photographers. I got to learn various techniques and I got to assist Roland Charles on a few of his commercial shoots and learn a little bit about lighting, so it was an extremely important place for me to develop my instincts about photography and to decide what I wanted to do, and to have other African American photographers show me that it could be done.

GV: Your photographs in L.A. feel much more spacious than the ones you would go on to make in New York. How did you start to develop your photographic sensibilities there?

GC: This is where I developed my initial instincts and ideas about the medium. L.A. is a place that’s very spread out. It’s very much dominated by the car. I found myself drawn to a type of photography where proximity was important, and so it’s difficult to create those kinds of images in L.A., particularly on the street. In terms of photographing jazz, there were jazz clubs in L.A. that I would go to, so I was definitely able to explore that part of my interest. But as far as photographing on the street, [those images] are marked by a certain distance from people or solitary figures in a vast landscape, that sort of thing. Moving to New York gave me the opportunity to figure out how to photograph within close proximity to people.

Gerald Cyrus, “Horace Tapscott and Bassist,” Los Angeles, 1992.

GV: Was the impulse to create the work you made in New York during the 1990s a conscious act of cultural preservation? I’m wondering if you were drawn to these spaces because this was your area of interest, or if you had a sense that change was coming?

GC: I had no idea the culture was going to change so fast or almost disappear. It was more about exploring something that interested me, and trying to do it in a way that could exploit my artistic sensibilities. Looking at these things, whether it be jazz, Black culture, street culture or just the history of Harlem, I wanted to explore them and to see if I could do it in my own way.

GV: OK, so you didn’t start off making work with the intention of thinking through cultural preservation, but that is a huge aspect to your work.

GC: I think that’s a byproduct of photography, that things that you photograph at some point are no longer going to be there. Looking at those images now, I can see things in L.A. that aren’t the same. Things in Harlem that are not the same. I don’t think any of those bars and lounges in Harlem that I photographed in are still around. Things you see in advertisements, the way people dress, fashion, all those things are changing. And so, even if it’s not your intent to document a changing culture, it ends up being that way. If you’re out there in the streets photographing life as it happens, that’s going to be part of it.

Gerald Cyrus, “We Can Get Along,” Los Angeles, 1992.

GV: Mentorship is something that I’ve written about before. It’s a hot topic for many of us, and it’s so loaded and tricky. When I first started, I was desperate for mentorship — you know, somebody who got there before you did that could guide and advise. They see that you have the talent and hunger and they’re receptive to your ask for support.

I think I told you the story of a photojournalist that I met when I first got to New York, and he was very kind. He invited me into his home and gave me such great advice. After we met, I sent him an email, and I was like, “Hey, would you consider being my mentor?” I wrote a thorough list of what I believed mentorship entailed. I didn’t want somebody to be like, “Yeah, I’ll mentor you,” and it’s just them telling me how to do things in their way. I was interested in mentorship as stewardship. Mentorship as critique, yes, but also as education and support. I wrote this really lovely email, and he received it and never responded. But when I started shooting cover stories for the New York Times, he would send me random emails congratulating me. It was odd and painful, and years later it became evident that he felt some guilt around that.

While hunting for mentorship, I became friends with folks like Ming Smith, Renee Cox and Eric Johnson. But those relationships weren’t mentorship. They were friendships or some kind of imbalanced peership. It was mostly me, eagerly listening to the stories of people who’ve had really fascinating careers and lives. I never did find the thing that I was seeking.

Do you feel you have adequate mentorship?

GC: As I mentioned before, very early on I was able to connect with Black Gallery, and I definitely consider those individuals to be mentors. They helped me to exhibit my work and get a little experience as an assistant. There would be monthly gatherings, in the late ’80s, and they would have slideshows, and you’d get to meet so many other photographers. That was absolutely a space where I felt that I was getting some mentorship. As well as with one of my early teachers, Sheila Pinkel, who’s a fabulous artist. I took a course from her at UCLA, and she was the first person to tell me where to buy a Roy DeCarava book. I mentioned to her that I was interested in his work. I had seen a documentary film about him, and she told me to go to Hennessey + Ingalls in Santa Monica to buy his book. And even when the course ended, I continued to go by to show her my work. So she absolutely was a mentor.

Then, when I moved to New York, I found it to be much more difficult.

GV: Why do you think that mentorship was such a struggle in New York?

GC: I think New York is just a much more competitive place and people are very wary of having ideas stolen from them. Also, I think people are more pressed for time. Maybe they just don’t have the time to give. I would get the names of photographers and call them up and I would rarely get a returned phone call. Later on, I would meet these photographers and become friends with them — you know, when I was more on their level. But when I was starting out and trying to get some advice or someone to show me the ropes, I couldn’t find that in New York.

GV: As you’ve aged, how has your relationship to mentorship changed and maybe your understanding of what mentorship is?

GC: Well, now people ask me to be a mentor. Sometimes it’s surprising because I feel like I’m still kind of struggling to find my way. So the fact that other people are asking me for advice …

GV: But don’t you think that that’s a lot of what the problem was when you were looking for mentorship? That the elders thought the exact same way?

GC: Possibly, but I mean, I always respond to people.

GV: [Laughs.] OK, so that’s an issue of bedside manner.

GC: I might not have much, but I’m willing to talk to you. If you have any questions, I’m willing to answer. I do try to be helpful, as much as I can.

Gioncarlo Valentine, “Gerald laughing in his studio,” Philadelphia, 2025.

Gerald Cyrus, “Gioncarlo,” Los Angeles, June 6, 2026.

GV: Why would you feel like you wouldn’t be the person for those folks seeking your guidance?

GC: Because, I mean, I’m not widely published or widely exhibited. I’m surprised sometimes when people actually know my work. [Laughs.] Like, where did you see it?

GV: What does that feel like to you? That rationale that you just presented? I find it very heartbreaking, albeit familiar. That’s one of the strongest tools of white supremacy. It will disenfranchise you to the extremes, no matter how brilliant you are, and you’ll be so dispossessed that you actually lose sight of your own significance, your own talent and impact. Meanwhile, when we, your audience, see your work we are completely knocked over by it.

GC: Well, that takes me back to the ’80s when I learned about DeCarava and I bought his “Friends of Photography” monograph. I learned that he had this other widely acclaimed book from the ’50s called “The Sweet Flypaper of Life” [co-authored with Langston Hughes]. And I thought, “Oh man, this guy is fantastic!” And I would mention him to white photographers, and they had no idea who he was. So it kind of goes back to that, you can be a person who achieves this level of accomplishment and still be unknown, which was shocking to me.

GV: This brings me back to a question I’m always thinking through, but that feels top of mind for me these days: What does it mean to be successful? How do you define success as an artist beyond visibility, beyond being known? It can’t just be about being known because each one of our areas of art is niche. Broadway is niche. Theater is niche. Writing, photography, painting, ultimately these things are all niche spaces. We think this photographer or that photographer is big s—, but they are rarely household names if your household is not filled with like-minded artists. I think about this all the time with Ta-Nehisi Coates because, to me, he’s such a hero. But ask a random person on the streets about Ta-Nehisi Coates, baby, they don’t know who the f— that man is.

[Laughs.]

GC: You have to define it for yourself in terms of setting goals for yourself, and then try to achieve those goals. In terms of having a close group of colleagues who you respect that you can show your work to and get strong feedback. But in order to make it as an artist, you have to have some strong self-determination to keep going, which can be difficult.

GV: How have you kept going?

GC: I’m hardheaded, so I was gonna do it one way or the other, even it was just me looking at my own work. But, again, having colleagues that I could go to, and they say, “Yeah, your work is strong. Keep going!” It’s important to have those people that can really push you.

GV: There are many similarities in our work, both in the kinds of subjects that we’re drawn to, and our preference for black-and-white images. What do you think accounts for that, a.k.a. are you my dad?

Gerald Cyrus, “Mom,” Los Angeles, 1991.

Gioncarlo Valentine, “A picture of Gerald as a little boy,” Los Angeles, 2026.

Gioncarlo Valentine, “Gerald’s mother,” Los Angeles, 2026.

GC: You know, I think there’s like a lineage, right? When you’re looking at the work of African American photographers throughout history, I think most of it passes through black-and-white imagery. So most of that medium, most of that legacy is going to be in black and white, and in terms of the subject matter, I don’t know. Maybe there’s something in our work that shows a reverence for the culture that maybe you don’t see in everyday media. A certain deepness and insight into the culture. I also think we’re both very attuned to gestures and how it reflects cultural attitudes.

GV: Do you ever think about your photographic family tree? Who’s up in there? Who’s your photo papa?

GC: [Laughs.] It’s probably DeCarava. Definitely. I really didn’t know anything about serious photography, or consider that I would be someone interested in serious photography, until I saw a documentary film on him, and that sent me down this road. And other people like Josef Koudelka and Danny Lyon. Lee Friedlander in the sense of how the camera sees things, not so much in terms of his humanistic sensibility. Andre Kertész was an early influence. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Beuford Smith. Street photographers like Helen Levitt, a lot of Magnum and Kamoinge photographers.

GV: When somebody picks up your book, “Uptown Odyssey,” what do you want them to walk away with?

GC: I want them to have a little journey through a time period and a place, and get a sense, a feeling, and maybe get a heightened awareness of what those streets were like, what that subway was like, what these nightclubs and bars were like, and come away feeling like they were nourished in some way by looking at the photographs.

Gioncarlo Valentine, “Gerald and me next to the Meteor Man suit,” Los Angeles, 2026.

Gioncarlo Valentine is an award–winning photographer and writer from Baltimore, whose work focuses on Black life and legacy.

The family drama is a distinct American genre— one at which playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins excels. His 2013 show, “Appropriate,” about a prominent Arkansas clan that discovers old photos tying their deceased paterfamilias to a Jim Crow era lynch mob, won a Tony Award for best revival two years ago. Jacobs-Jenkins soon topped that by winning the 2025 Pulitzer Prize along with a Tony for best drama for his next play, “Purpose,” which unfolds during a snow day in the Chicago home of a prominent civil rights leader named Solomon Jasper.

That production is making its Los Angeles premiere at Geffen Playhouse, beginning Wednesday and running through Dec. 20. The Broadway and Steppenwolf Theatre Company production features the same Tony-nominated and Tony-winning team as it had in New York, including director Phylicia Rashad and actor Kara Young, who won a Tony for best featured actress for her portrayal of Aziza, a social worker who ends up in the middle of the family conflict at the heart of the play.

“I feel like we’re always using family as a metaphor. It’s always a stand-in for some American crisis,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a recent Zoom interview from New York. “This is something I discovered when I was working on ‘Appropriate,’ every major family drama you can think of is animated in some way by anxieties of race and class. Ultimately, this is your tribe and you gotta figure out where your tribe’s value lives and what challenges that tribe’s value.”

The “Purpose” tribe was inspired by an array of prominent political families, but the one most commonly referenced by audiences is that of civil rights icon Jesse Jackson. Like Jackson, Solomon (Harry Lennix), is a former clergyman and old-school activist, while his son, Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis), is a disgraced politician fresh from serving prison time for mishandling campaign funds. Junior’s estranged wife, the bitter and often hilariously caustic Morgan (Alana Arenas), wants nothing to do with any of them, while her mother-in-law Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), pilots the family through trying times. Observing with a jaundiced eye is Naz (Jon Michael Hill), a nature photographer and narrator of the chaotic weekend as it unfolds. Along for the ride is his friend Aziza, expectant mother of his child conceived through artificial insemination.

The original Broadway cast of “Purpose” is returning for its debut at Geffen Playhouse.

(Marc J. Franklin)

For Jacobs-Jenkins, inspiration came from the work of Arthur Miller, which prompted him to ask why there were no family dramas in the American canon centering Black people of status. It inspired a deep dive into political histories, which led to the realization that no Black political dynasty has endured beyond two or three generations.

Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre commissioned the play after the success of “Appropriate,” stipulating that Jacobs-Jenkins use two actors from its ensemble. This led to the casting of Hill, Davis and Arenas. Jacobs-Jenkins noted that he was also required to write the play in the company’s house style: muscular realism.

“As we worked together over the ensuing years and various workshop settings, the story and the family began to emerge,” he said. “When I was in rehearsals for the revival of ‘Appropriate’ on Broadway, a lot of the writing was happening then.”

The central action of the play takes place during a dinner foreshadowed by Naz telling the audience to “Buckle up!” It’s a lengthy scene that introduces long-standing points of friction between characters — Junior’s plan to revive his career by publishing his mother’s letters, the platonic parental arrangement between Naz and Aziza, Solomon’s discontent with Junior, and Morgan’s discontent with all of them.

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, left, Kara Young, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill in the Broadway / Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Purpose,” which makes its L.A. premiere at Geffen Playhouse.

(Marc J. Franklin)

“A really important site of a family cohering is that dinner table. So I always find it’s incredibly satisfying on stage,” said Jacobs-Jenkins, acknowledging a nod to the dinner scene in another well-known family drama, “August: Osage County.”

“Everyone’s days are stacked, and that’s where the story gets wrestled out of how the family is moving forward,” he said.

Rashad’s turn as pill-popping family matriarch, Violet Weston, in “August: Osage County” suitably prepared her for directing the dinner drama in “Purpose.”

“There’s certain things that will happen within the scene, whether an actor turns to the left or the right, who you’re speaking to, whether someone is seated in a way that lifts them up higher,” Rashad said of the physically static yet dramatically compelling sequence. “I study the play very carefully, but I’m always hearing something new, no matter how many times I’ve read it. I’m looking to see what comes naturally to the actors. And that kind of informs the direction that I’ll give.”

Phylicia Rashad is directing Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony Award-winning play, “Purpose” at the Geffen Playhouse.

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

When Jacobs-Jenkins finished writing “Purpose,” he felt he had composed, “a high tragedian drama.” But once it hit the boards, the theater filled with laughter.

“I don’t think of myself as a comic writer in that I don’t think in terms of joke structures and comic structures,” he said, shaking his head, noting the many situations that elicit laughter. “I really just try to make illusions of people that feel real. I try to make room for all those kinds of audience responses in the work just because it’s ultimately about connecting to the viewer.”

Much of the humor isn’t on the page but in the performances, like when Aziza chides Naz for concealing the historic relevance of his family and then, realizing their prominence, cries, “Oh, my God!” With hands on her stomach — and her future baby who will carry the same genes — she widens her eyes and repeats the line.

“You don’t always have to tell actors exactly what to do, especially when you’re working with people who are creative and inquisitive, and who like to take risks and try things. Some gestures seem very natural for an actor. But if you change actors, you might get something different,” said Rashad, who has won two Tonys for her acting and made her Broadway directorial debut with “Purpose.”

Best known for playing Clair Huxtable on the 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” Rashad has received six Emmy nominations and is currently in HBO’s “The Gilded Age.” She won an NAACP Theatre Award for directing Center Theatre Group’s 2014 production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Mark Taper Forum, and she’ll be returning to CTG next spring to direct August Wilson’s critically acclaimed “Fences”.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins poses in the press room with the award for best revival of a play for “Appropriate” during the 2024 Tony Awards.

(Evan Agostini / invision/ AP)

Riding high on accolades for “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins recently announced his next play, “Grass,” starring Daniel Kaluuya in his New York stage debut at the Park Avenue Armory in February. A news release describes it as “equal parts fantasia, memory play, and morality play…a surreal meditation on the limits of personal, ancestral, and national identity amidst social upheaval.”

Despite being at the height of his career, Jacobs-Jenkins expressed some trepidation about staging a show in the cavernous, 55,000-square-foot Armory. “A mother and son take a road trip through the South and kooky stuff happens. So, it’s a road play,” he paused, a nervous grin spreading across his face. “We’ll see if I pull it off.”