Killing the Negative
Art by Joel Daniel Phillips
Poems by Quraysh Ali Lansana
One morning in early 2019, I was drinking my coffee and reading online about the foundational photographs of the Great Depression commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), when I stumbled on a photograph by Walker Evans. Right in the center of the image, there was a giant, black, Baldessari-esque circle marring the photograph. I was intrigued. Zooming in, I realized that the black void wasn’t an addition to the image, but rather a subtraction. Someone had taken a hole-punch to the original negative. I soon discovered that, for the first 4 years of the FSA project, Roy E. Stryker had wielded his editorial power through an irreversible act—punching holes in 35mm negatives that he deemed unworthy of inclusion. Once punched, the images could not be used, either in popular magazines or in Congressional presentations about the plight of desperate Americans. This ruinous process was called “killing the negative” (as described in Erica X Eisen’s preceding essay).
For me, Stryker’s destructive editing called into question our understanding of the truth and the veracity of the historical record, bringing into startling focus the power that a single individual had to shape the understanding of an entire nation grappling with a moment of crisis. Much of my artistic work revolves around questions of truth, historical amnesia, and the stories we tell ourselves about our collective pasts. I wanted to create a series of large-scale drawings from that archive of killed negatives with those large black circular voids still in them. I began wading through the Library of Congress’s digital archive and visiting the collection in person, selecting about 400 favorites from more than 4,000 hole-punched negatives and then, eventually, narrowing the list to about 100 images that I knew I had to draw. Next, I started making my way through this shortlist, one drawing at a time. When translated into drawings—and later paintings—the physical subtraction created by the hole-punch became a visual addition, an indelible record of the shaping of the narrative, with the circular void destroying the original image, even as it was creating an entirely new one.
As I began the initial drawings in my studio at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Quraysh Ali Lansana wandered in one evening. Quraysh was struck by the studies, particularly because the identities of the people photographed are unknown, and immediately proposed a collaboration where he would write poems imagining the stories of the people captured in these frames. The poems respond to the echoing voids created by Stryker’s hole-punch, weaving new words to fill the vacant space purposefully left by government censorship, creating an entirely new conversation about power, representation, and the shaping of America’s historical narratives. FSA photographers crossed the country to construct a record of need in America and to build political and popular support for progressive social programs. The photographs contributed to social reforms, but the FSA initiative itself was not entirely open and equitable—and need in our communities is still present. Through these interventions, we hope to explore these complex and timely issues and to provide a catalyst for important conversations about censorship, racism, agency, and equity. Our goal is to provide the often anonymous subjects of the hole-punched FSA photographs with new voices and a powerful new presence. Their perspectives, though pierced, have not been killed.—Joel Daniel Phillips
half life
my belly too lonely to be happy, too dirty to be pretty
a girl, maybe, lost in the lazy wood of this house
like i aint here. cept when she need somethin
done. aint no play, jus chore afta chore afta chore
like mama die if i aint mind the babies, chase spiders,
pump water from the dusty well. she live to keep
daddy from leaving, i’m here to keep the rabbits
in the hutch. we see daddy in short breaths in light
his eyes fight to see. mama feeds him dinner
at dark morning. when i bring lunch its suppertime.
he bathes in soot, coughs rim tub. wear him on
my feet, sludge from wheezing earth. his shabby
old boots sag mama’s feet like a lifeless wish.
Killed Negative #6 / After John Vachon, 2020, 80” x 44”, charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper. (Original nitrate negative by John Vachon, dated May 1939; archive text: “Untitled photo, possibly related to: The Blizzard family, Kempton, West Virginia.”)
pulaski county, arkansas
fall 1935
lil jimmy turn his back side & keep pickin’
shrubs but i aint seen no white man look lak
him befo. skin cloud pale in jus’ cold days. leaf
eater mouth hair atop rusty lips. him talk
funny too. sing-song strange kinda warbler
tune. his words smilin’ at us tho. papa
say no truss no nicey-nice tom. dem
da ones get ya dead. lak in elaine. dats
where unkle jimmy lynched. why lil jimmy
wid us. so i cold eye mista hard. him
wanna know too much. why we aint in skool.
how i tell he aint from here tho. erybody know
nigga chirren skool start when too chilly to pick.
Killed Negative #28 / After Ben Shahn, 2020, 42” x 56.5”, charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper. (Original 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn, dated October 1935; archive text: “Untitled photo, possibly related to: Young cotton picker, Pulaski County, Arkansas. Schools for colored children do not open until January 1st so as not to interfere with cotton picking.”)
instinct
piney woods country ain’t no place
to be poor and colored papa had
eleven acres den dey come
for de land make him so scared
he buckled sold it so dey can make
paper up north razorbacks
ate most crops hateful pigs
too bad dem not like wiregrass
be in befo dark else rude swine
or nasty crackas come callin
we crouch at first african church
prayin both hogs leave us be
no look no white boy in de eye
dem say it disrespect
i say it my life far as i see it
not tryin to be de next horned negro
dat doctor dedge made of joe smith
show’d him off all over de place
goat horns on a full grown nigga
wildman in a cage erybody see
was wanderin to de railroad station
dese pecans get suppa or be suppa
Killed Negative #30 / After Arthur Rothstein, 2020, 56.5” x 42”, charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper. (Original 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein, dated January 1937; archive text: “Untitled photo, possibly related to: Negro boy selling pecans by road, near Alma, Georgia.”)
the grind
on the outskirts of industry, the small-town grit
big city bosses read in newspapers, bottom lines
i am a cog. a somewhat human afterthought
of the machinery. the mills in chicago, smoke
stacks in new york pay me no mind, no coins
to mend this lived in uniform, second skin.
try to find them with every long glare, carry
them in clinched jowls. my neck a cranky spindle
driven by hunger. those men know nothing
about the belly growls of lack. their sons
shoes are shiny, their girls smell like tulips
behind light mist. their clothes fit nice.
i will die tethered to this metal. this pulley
won’t lift my weight. cord won’t change
my direction. i am so they can. what work is.
Killed Negative #45 / After Unknown Photographer, 2021, 56.5” x 42”, charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper. (Original 35mm nitrate negative by unknown photographer, dated between 1935 and 1942; archive text: “Untitled.”)
a flower no more
there’s a legend around here that a welsh prince
fella named madoc, a naval man, found his way
up the alabama after his daddy died & his boys
fought over the throne. madoc & three brothers
settled where georgia meets tennessee. they hitched
cherokee, became white indians, love and warred
& survivors fled to southern indiana. some say
it ain’t true, but i been a cambric orphan days
on end. the locals call me scots-irish but they simple
folk. easier to make me a label when trying to forget
your homeland. i know my cousins are rotting
corpses in senghenydd & gallipolli, the mines
& minefields of gruff scarcity, dreadful need. left
broken hill on mother’s dreams in dylan’s mouth:
though lovers be lost love shall not; and death
shall have no dominion. brown county soil tainted
trees cut like unruly children’s hair, patchy brush
& undergrowth. roosevelt stole my land to make
ponds, lakes & streets. i fled poverty to find want
a world away. mother was wrong.
Killed Negative #54 / After Theodore Jung / Red #7 (Oil) 2, 2021, 58” x 39”, Oil on Panel. (Original 35mm nitrate negative by Carl Mydans, dated March 1936; archive text: “Untitled photo, possibly related to: Client whose property has been optioned by the government, Brown County, Indiana.”)
for a dollar
at an auction house for bronze antiques
we stand on sale for the next taker all
fedoras & suits. we look the part of cigars
we can’t afford, handmade like the country
failing us. carnegie & rockefeller
as invisible to us as we are them. from penthouses
we are rats worrying gutters for crumbs. in the middle
above lumpen factory hacks, yet arms too short
to reach their hems. busboy, counterman, bakery
salesgirl. wasn’t jesus a cabinet maker? nothing
holy in this line of want, of need. except the want
the need. ten union stooges dead in chicago & we
hunger. drab clouds grunt despair in gotham dim.
it is 8:47 am, it is brooding manhattan. algonquian
sneer at our misfortune as the hindenburg resettles
the land. oh, the humanity! the humanity. fdr asks me
to care about okie dust as the brown bomber guts
our boy braddock & harlem laughs. my kitten craves
the salon, hair kreml tonic oily but stiff as toothpicks.
she don’t eat much. we don’t have much, but her jawline
edgier than my tastes. i can survive on cheap bourbon
& lucky strikes. she deserves dempsey’s, the paradise
cabaret. too pretty for water stew every night. or was.
the mink has more body than she does, filling my head
with snow white & howard hughes. some dames
have room for fantasy. i’m trying to walk past
hooverville, arm in arm. so we did, to this glum
lost souls meeting.
Killed Negative #58 / After Arthur Rothstein, 2022, 42” x 56.5”, charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper. (Original 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein, dated December 1937; archive text: “Untitled photo, possibly related to: Employment agency, Sixth Avenue, New York, New York.”)
