jon henry

On “Stranger Fruit”, a look into the aftermath of police violence faced by the African American community

Jon Henry is a digital artist from Queens, New York, with a primary focus on photography and text. His work sheds light on the sociopolitical issues faced by the African American community, which has garnered recognition by the likes of LensCulture, Aperture Foundation and BRIC, among others.

In a media-inundated world, art becomes especially important in breaking through the noise and contextualizing experiences that we as viewers may never face or fully understand. One of Jon’s most well-recognized projects, Stranger Fruit, does just that—portraying an often unseen reality around the aftermath of police violence towards African American men, and the resulting feelings of loss, suffering, and injustice their families must endure.

I spoke with Jon to learn more about how his six-year project began, his approach to preparing for his shoots and his thoughts on today’s climate.  For a deeper look into Stranger Fruit, check out Jon’s recent lecture for the School of Visual Arts here.

**Disclaimer: Interview shortened for clarity. 

For the people who are seeing “Stranger Fruit” for the first time, could you explain the main concept behind the project?

The project was created in response to the murders of African American men due to police violence. Using the motif of the Pietà—Michael Angelo’s piece of the Virgin Mary holding the body of the dead Christ—I used that as the vehicle to tell the story, and I’ve been photographing families pretty much across the country for the past six years. 

You began this project in 2014, but there were a series of events that led up to you actually taking that first image. Could you describe what that timeline looked like? 

Yeah, so while the project began in 2014, the concept really began in 2008 with the Sean Bell Trial. Sean Bell was the young man who was murdered at his bachelor party in Jamaica, Queens. You know, me being born and raised in Queens and always spending a lot of time there, it really hit home and stood with me for a very long time.

In 2008 when the verdict came out, I had just come back from visiting family, and later that year one of my good friends was getting married and I was one of his groomsmen. Later at his bachelor party, all I could think about was what if this was happening to him? What if this was happening to us? 

There are several angles through which you could have approached this issue. Why did you choose to focus on the mother-son relationship in particular?

I know that relationship 1-1 just from conversations with my own mother, who still to this day, even literally this week, was apprehensive about me traveling to Long Island to the Hamptons for a photoshoot. So I know that relationship specifically and I wanted to start with and focus on that because again, I was thinking that it would be stronger if it’s directed and a little more concise, a little more narrow. 

Of course I could include fathers, daughters, etc. but then I’m not sure if it starts to get too wide and starts to lose the viewer. You still have the wiggle room to talk about everything because there are many issues around this, but I wanted to keep it focused and have the elements repeating from city to city. I felt like that would be a stronger way to make it effective. 

There was a lot of behind the scenes work that went into creating these images. What were you doing to prepare, and who were you drawing inspiration from for these shoots? 

I was looking at a lot of historical references of the Pietà at the time, so I had grown up always around religious iconography and around painting, and when I was in college I’d go to The Met all the time to sit and study paintings. So I knew the Pieta very well and I knew the different versions of it—the different poses, the different iterations from other painters—so I was just using that as a backdrop and launching pad for how I wanted to photograph the individuals. 

In that first image I wanted something almost as close to the Michael Angelo piece as I could get but still make it my own, which is why I had him wrapped in some type of fabric wrapped around his waist to look like a tunic. And that was also the only image where I used studio lighting—to make it a little more theatrical and dramatic. 

Looking at the different elements of the images, one of the most profound parts of each is the mother’s gaze—what were you trying to accomplish from their expressions?

The gaze is essential to all of the mother-son images, just as a way of holding the viewers’ attention. Everyone is inundated with imagery 24/7 and it’s hard to pay attention to one image beyond a fraction of a second. I found out with the Pieta paintings in particular, where Mary is looking directly into the camera into the viewer, it was harder to walk away from it. You stay there and it’s like you keep coming back to the image, looking for more things and returning to the image over and over again. So the gaze is really important. It’s also almost like an appeal to the viewer, with everything the project means it’s like alright the mother is asking the viewer a question, like what are you going to do? Why do I have to go through this? So just opening up doors for the viewers to have multiple reads.

In your SVA lecture, you also spoke about the role that skin plays in your images. What was your thought process behind how you wanted to cloth the boys and men you were photographing?

As I mentioned, there were certain elements of the project that I wanted to be uniform, like repeated, because I felt it would be stronger if it was a collection of cohesive images that were similar but different in varying from family to family. So I’m thinking about skin, vulnerability and how obviously when you don’t have anything on you’re super susceptible to getting harmed or damaged, anything can bruise you. But that can also be translated to when sons are not with their mothers, or not with their families and are on the streets. These ridiculous tragedies continue to happen, and so it’s just that fear that you can’t protect. It's vulnerability but also protection.

How did you leverage the environment as a part of the story? 

Environment is crucial. Because I come from New York, I could’ve shot the entire thing in the city, but it’s not just a NY issue it’s a nation-wide issue with the police. So it was important to showcase ok this is what it’s like in this location vs. this location. Urban vs. rural, big city vs. small city, and almost everything in between. Because if you go down the list of these murders, it’s happened everywhere— park, a big city, a random area off the side of the road. So it was important to know that and be able to show that in the work that all of these families are connected in this and it’s reflecting the fears that millions of Americans have. 

Could you talk more about the story behind Nefertiti’s image, and how the poem she wrote became the missing piece of your project?

Yeah Nefertiti's awesome. I didn’t know her, but she saw my work and was moved and reached out to be a part of the project. We went up to the Bronx, scouted the area before meeting up, and yeah everything was pretty great. 

It was just crazy because a year later, I’m in Chicago and I’m photographing six families in the course of a weekend, and she reposts this image with her and her son, and this poem she wrote—I think I screenshotted the original post from Facebook—and it just blew me away, because I knew something was missing to complete the project. I just didn’t know what it was, whether it was more images, if the son was to come back in a redemptive way, if there needed to be more shots of the locations or whatever it was. But yeah just having the text from the mothers made everything like, oh yeah this is exactly it. 

How has the viewer response been to your project? What are the kinds of messages you’ve been receiving? 

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and so many people have reached out and messaged me just saying how they appreciate the work on so many different levels and that obviously feels great. It’s really exploded in the past three weeks, with everyone either wanting to interview or publish or whatever it is, so that’s great. 

“But at the same time it’s difficult because you have to think of the cost. It costs people’s lives to get to this point and this is something we’ve been talking about for years, but hopefully now being at the forefront of America’s consciousness maybe there can be some type of acknowledgment and we can finally move forward, or at least start having some type of change.”

Looking at the BLM movement in today’s climate, there seems to be a higher level of accountability just from the use of mobile phones, social media, body cams, etc. but with that also comes a lot of media “noise” in general. What has been your view on how the media, whether it be news outlets or social media platforms, has played a role in this movement? 

Like you mentioned, it’s a double-edged sword, because you need the visuals. If you didn’t have the visuals, like that’s what has really spurred the movement. Having the visuals of George Floyd—like that entire video—is what pushed everyone to the point we’re at right now. But at the same time it’s difficult because you know it’s grief, it’s trauma, it’s reliving these traumas over and over again because of social media it’s so easily available that literally anytime you turn on Instagram or Twitter you just scroll down and you see 18 straight posts of the same thing. You have to worry about people’s mental health because it really does wear on you. So it’s difficult to gauge because at the same time it is crucial to have that information, like would we even be talking about Ahmaud Arbery if we didn’t have that video? So it’s needed, but it’s also difficult and that’s why it’s so intense for this community to continue to have to deal with and live with and think about over and over again.

You can view more of Jon’s work @whoisdamaster

And Jon’s full portfolio here.

To support other Black photographers and their work around Black visibility, check out @seeinblackproject