Wherever There Is Light (WTIL) emerges from photographer Larry W. Cook’s commitment to social practice as a foundational aspect of image-making. Cook’s interest in vernacular photography began in young adulthood in suburban Prince George’s County, Maryland with Go-Go Club portraits and prison visiting room images. His early series such as When Dad Comes Home (2013) and The Visiting Room (2019) document the aesthetic and conceptual richness bound in personal, familial, and visual histories of incarceration. Wherever There Is Light is an extension of Cook’s cultural work of mining, reflecting, and transforming carceral aesthetics toward a liberatory praxis concerned with repair, futurity, self-definition, and social critique.

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Wherever There Is Light provides community and photographic dialogue for formerly incarcerated photographers to advance their practice beyond vernacular and carceral aesthetics. Vernacular photography is defined as “everyday images” that are created outside of the fine art context.1 Scholar and curator, Nicole Fleetwood defines carceral aesthetics as “ways of envisioning and crafting art and culture that reflect the conditions of imprisonment.”2 Photographs that convey carceral aesthetics are consistently categorized as vernacular but Fleetwood highlights the artistic intention of such work as “constructing other worlds…that speak to and through captivity.”3

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Wherever There Is Light brings together artists with shared experiences to explore the camera as “a choice of weapon” to refigure and reshape the inequitable, unjust conditions that define life in the United States of America.4 The photographers assembled in this exhibition employ portraiture, collage, and conceptual strategies to address themes of community building, introspection, self-definition, and activism. This essay aims to situate the images from Wherever There Is Light among broader intellectual trends that use visual culture to mobilize social change.5

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The spirit of the convenings and exhibitions for Wherever There Is Light are aptly represented in Larry Cook’s Horizons series (Figure 1). Across these photographic collages, men are represented in pairs against a stark background, connected through pose and gesture. Cook inverts the conventions of prison visiting room portraits, defined by pictorial backgrounds with sitters in the foreground. In Cook’s composition, the silhouettes of the figures contain images of a natural or urban landscape urging the viewer to see the boundless possibility of all persons, regardless of their social status and location. Nicole Fleetwood notes the function of backdrops in prison photography, “Prison backdrops denote specific visits from relatives even as they alter the memory and experience of the visit. They also mark how the incarcerated and unincarcerated experience time differently.”6 Cook replaces the painterly backdrop of the prison room portrait with the infinite span of a horizon. For artists creating three-dimensional compositional space on a two-dimensional surface, horizons establish spatial depth. Cook encourages viewers to see the shape of a person beyond the carceral experience. Through the Wherever There is Light initiative, Larry Cook aims to equip this community of photographers with the aesthetic tools, resources, and community to create images that document and challenge our present moment.

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Self-portraiture is an exercise that connects the Los Angeles cohort (2019-2020) and the Philadelphia cohort (2023-2024) of Wherever There Is Light. Across workshop sessions, the photographers joined Cook in creating portraits of one another (Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 & Figure 6). For the Los Angeles cohort, this was a precursor for self-portraits that comprised the first Wherever There Is Light exhibition at The Canary Test (Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10 & Figure 11). These photographs display a range of approaches to light, shadow, and color but remain united gestures of refusal, reflection, and agency. The self-portraits included in Wherever There is Light are testaments to the camera’s ability to project self-definition. Although art historian and curator Cheryl Finley directly addresses legacies of self-portraiture among African American artists, her conclusions can also be extended to artists of color represented across the Wherever There Is Light cohorts. She notes:

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One might say that it is a rite of passage for all artists to engage in some form of self-portraiture…But for the black artist, the genre of self-portraiture—whether traditional painting, photography, sculpture, assemblage or printmaking—is much more than a rite of passage. Instead, it is often regarded as a necessity, a means of self-representation that is not often seen in media images or in other historical or art historical contexts. Thus, the means, language, and media that black artists employ in their works of self-portraiture are often more pressing, indelible and legible (or in some cases purposely illegible, abstract and obtuse).7

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Finley calls us to view the function of self-portraiture by Black and brown artists as counternarratives to the prevalence of negative representations of Black men in American media and popular culture. Extending Nicole Fleetwood’s interpretation of prison visiting room portraits, WTIL self-portraits contest the photographic history of the carceral index but also document aesthetic experimentation in self-definition.8

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Vernon Ray created several self-portraits for Wherever There Is Light. When the second cohort convened in the fall of 2023, Vernon Ray was preparing to embark on a journey to West Africa. In cohort discussions, he mentioned the emotional weight of this voyage, in light of his life experiences. This trip to Africa, considered by many African Americans as the cultural “motherland,” prompted him to consider his ability to move globally and what this trip might mean for his son’s sense of the world. During spring studio visits, Vernon shared moving digital photographs captured on his Apple iPhone defined by stark value contrast, dynamic line and palpable texture. These photographs established his compositional priorities for Misguided Royalty and A King Is What I See (Figure 12 & Figure 13). Both photographs have a strong diagonal compositional line and sharp balance of tonal value. But in A King Is What I See, Ray composed a rich visual record of his outlook on life and confident sense of possibility. He addresses the viewer with his direct gaze and initiates the viewer’s movement into the compositional space. The mirror establishes the middle ground of the photograph, creating balance between the pattern of the residential high-rise apartment in the background and the smooth planes of white, gray, and black in the foreground.

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The repetition of form in A King Is What I See emphasizes Vernon Ray’s central themes: strategy and self-determination. He provided this explanation for his use of the chessboard pieces:

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[The chess pieces] are signifying strategy in my life…the chess piece symbolizes, you know, taking my time and actually knowing where I want to go. Moving forward. Growth. Also perception, you know, how I see myself. I was always taught to think the most of myself. Not belittle myself. Not to think of myself in small ways, but think big. I learned how to encourage myself even when there’s no one else around.9

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In this photograph, he captures the necessity of strategy in life decisions and the importance of self-knowledge as well as self-affirmation. It should be noted that both self-portraits depict the photographer at an elevated position against an aerial environment. He challenges viewers to recognize his ascension and the expansive possibilities for how his photography can transform the self, family, and community.

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Don O. Jones sustains the photographic practice of portraiture which he developed as a visiting room photographer. From our earliest discussions, Don had a reputation for being a leader and sharing the power of photography, even introducing fellow cohort member Akeil Robertson to photography through a visiting room photo program during their incarceration. For this iteration of Wherever There Is Light, Jones used his camera to chart social relationships through and beyond the carceral experience.10 Jones returned to a familiar subject in Terrell Woolfolk, a familiar face from Jones’s young adult years in Philadelphia and his carceral experience (Figure 14). Jones photographed Woolfolk and his family in the prison visiting room, allowing Jones to observe and document life events even Woolfolk’s marital vows.11 Across three photographs, Jones shows viewers Woolfolk’s life post-incarceration defined by his rootedness in the community as an anti-violence advocate.12

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In Preparing to Hit the Streets Working at PAAN (Philadelphia Anti-Drug Anti-Violence Network), Jones modifies the frontal pose consistent across prison portraiture (Figure 15). The tight compositional space is mediated through the sitter’s gaze and the chromatic rhythm of the mural in the background. The words in the mural identify the space as the office for the anti-violence community initiative that employs both the photographer and the subject. In contrast to the aspirational, idealized painted prison backdrops commonly found in visiting room portraits, the mural progresses chromatically from cool blues to warm yellows. Jones positioned Woolfolk precisely where his red athletic jersey and hat would echo the red figures and representation of Robert Indiana’s 1976 LOVE sculpture in the background. Similarly, Woolfolk‘s dark jacket and the shadow cast on the right side of his face by his baseball cap compositionally connect to the cool aspects of the mural, specifically the interconnected figures parallel to Woolfolk’s head.

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In many ways, the direct gaze of the sitter diverts the viewer’s attention to his roles in the community as a change-maker and conflict mediator. Don Jones documents how formerly incarcerated individuals are impacting and shaping their communities. Jones magnifies the tireless labor of neighborhood leaders to transform the circumstances that lead to incarceration. Additional photographs from this series feature Terrell Woolfolk’s wife and daughter, allowing the photographer to amass an archive that traces family life during and after incarceration. Jones continues to use the camera to strengthen the bonds
with community and family.

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José Diaz also turned to self-portraiture for Wherever There Is Light. Although all of the photographers from the WTIL Philadelphia Cohort served as visiting room photographers during their incarceration, Diaz began advancing his experimentation in photography during his undergraduate coursework in the New York University Prison Education Program. During our studio visit, José noted the impact of taking a photography course with leading photohistorian and photographer, Deborah Willis.13 This experience ignited his interest in photography’s ability to address the theme of time. In one of his earliest photographic collage series from the 2000s, Diaz explored the history of stickball in New York’s Latinx and Black communities by layering historical images to convey similarities and differences. Prior to beginning his self-portrait series, José began photographing members of his community, including formerly incarcerated friends and his partner’s daughter. These photographs prompted him to amplify his storytelling abilities through documentary photography. In our studio visit, Diaz made clear his emotional perspective: “I’m trying to figure out and capture those moments of joy or learning. My partner also does photography. So we’re trying to pass on those generational lessons that, you know, feel good.”14 With generational lessons in mind, Diaz returned to his digital collage methodology for Wherever There Is Light by turning to his personal history of representation.

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Beyond the State of Me and The State of Me function as a call and response in Diaz’s meditation on and mediation through his carceral experience (Figure 16 & Figure 17). He transforms a lifetime of institutional identification cards from high school through 2024. In Beyond the State of Me, Diaz challenges viewers with his direct gaze to see him beyond his carceral experience. The piercing stare from his larger self-portrait disrupts the patch work of identification cards, creating a stark juxtaposition between social definitions and his personal constitution. Moving from the bottom to the top of the composition, Diaz begins with his Brooklyn high school ID card anchored by a recent membership card to the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation. Stacked above these cards is his Florida driver’s license from the early 2000s alongside a New York identification card from the late 2010s. Across his eyes in the larger portrait, Diaz placed his prison ID card and his release ID card leaving viewers with a range of interpretive possibilities. He crafts a visual representation that echoes Nicole Fleetwood’s assertion that artists with carceral experiences create art that “speaks to and through captivity.”15 The upper register of cards corresponds with sites of formal education. His university IDs include his enrollment in New York University to his recent doctoral journey at the University of Miami. These vertical cards are represented above his head, thus emphasizing the educational experience, which requires taking in and synthesizing new information to shape one’s worldview.

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The State of Me pushes collage further with more layers to convey the complexity of life. This composition is united by childhood photographs of Diaz and his family with familiar identification cards overlaid to emphasize a broader arc of his life, beyond incarceration. Whereas Beyond the State of Me highlights external social definitions, The State of Me responds by amplifying the ways in which his family and community recognize and love him through all stages of his life. In The State of Me, the identification cards are minimized in scale, allowing viewers greater visual access to this facet of his familial photographic archive. Diaz encourages viewers to challenge social labels. This perspective is necessary to understanding the center of the collage, where Diaz has placed his carceral ID over a picture of himself as a toddler. The unsettling view of this toddler looking ahead to a future that includes incarceration extends Díaz’s interest in generational lessons that lead to generative future possibilities. José Diaz transformed his personal archive into a site for reflection, self-definition, and liberation.

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Several photographers from the Philadelphia WTIL Cohort found conceptual synergy with Larry Cook’s interest in assembling photographic archival collections. For almost a decade, Cook has collected vernacular photography, with great attention to images produced in the context of incarceration. I argue that Cook and WTIL photographers engage in “liberatory memory work.” Archivist Michelle Caswell defines “liberatory memory work” as:

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activating records for the liberation of oppressed communities…with an emphasis on the ways that records can be mobilized to achieve chronoautonomy (the ability of minoritized communities to build archives based on their own temporalities), self-recognition (the affective response to seeing one’s self robustly represented), and the redistribution of resources to repair ongoing harms.16

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The cultural work that Larry Cook engages in through the various iterations of Wherever There is Light exemplifies the mission at the core of this collaborative community. Wherever There Is Light photographers understand the power of the camera as a resource and tool to transform how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people are represented.

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On The Other Side of Landscape represents Cook’s “liberatory memory work.” He mined his personal archive of vernacular photography, which includes several albums of prison photographs, in order to think through freedom and unfreedom across the American landscape. By appropriating images from his archive and collaging natural landscapes and structural elements, Cook highlights how public perceptions around incarceration, space, and mobility are constructed and mal formed. Under Cook’s eye and hand, nature reinforces restrictive barriers of prisons (Figure 18). Moreover, in collages like On The Other Side of Landscape, #1, concrete walls and fences seduce viewers into compositional spatial depth (Figure 19). In this image, he utilizes subtle shifts in value and texture to guide the viewer’s eye to a break in the fortification where the barbed wire separates from the metal fencing. This, alongside the stained concrete, render the carceral system as decaying and dilapidated, an outdated structural mode unfit for our contemporary moment. This sentiment is echoed in On The Other Side of Landscape, #2 (Figure 20). Cook employs abstraction defined by angular shapes and variation in texture to focus the viewer’s attention on the thick vertical black line. Considering this image in the context of vernacular prison photography, Cook invites viewers to consider the crack as a metaphor for the inhumanity and inequality that characterizes the role of the penal system in America. Cook uses fine art genres such as landscape and abstraction to redirect critical attention toward critiques of the carceral state.

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Akeil Robertson explores conceptual photography as a means of analysis for Wherever There is Light. In our first studio visit, he expressed interest in creating a body of art that addressed what he describes as triple consciousness. In addition to his identity as a black man, Robertson conveys his hyper-awareness of his “vulnerability being on parole” and how it “shifted his relationship to space and sense of place.”17 Robertson swiftly moved from portraiture to examining the material and color symbolism of the blues, the standard uniform worn by incarcerated people. Akeil Robertson uses the neatly dry-cleaned uniform, concealed in plastic, to stand in not only for his presence but also the histories of Black men killed by social forms of discipline and punishment. This conceptual turn to examine his personal carceral experience was deeply informed by his process of distilling the feelings embodied in this uniform. The repetition of the blues form in Blues, complete with athletic shoes and the reflective surface of the dry-cleaner’s packaging, represents the recognition of the carceral experience (Figure 21). The variation in sneaker positions represents Robertson‘s presence, the source experiences of incarceration, and his current agency, mobility, and intellectual growth. Robertson emphasizes the tension between the culture of care this dry-cleaned, sheathed form communicates and the dehumanizing function of the blues in prisons.18

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Akeil Robertson took this symbolic form with him as he journeyed with his family to their ancestral home in South Carolina. The blues accumulated a new set of meanings for the photographer. By hanging the form from the southern trees, he introduced this symbol to photographic histories of lynching. Robertson challenges viewers to consider the carceral experience as tantamount to vigilante mob violence intended to discipline and terrorize African Americans (Figure 22). Akin to the black line in Larry Cook’s On The Other Side of Landscape, #2, the negative space between the top and pants asks viewers to examine the loss and disjuncture incarceration causes. Robertson’s Blues series is the result of the artist’s engagement with the camera to advance “critical black memory.” Black Studies scholar Leigh Raiford defines “critical black memory” as follows:

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African Americans have engaged in a practice of what I will call critical black memory, a mode or historical interpretation and political critique that has functioned as an important resource for framing and mobilizing African American social and political identities and movements…Critical black memory states, then, an ongoing, engaged practice through which a range of participants speak back to history and also ongoing crises faced by black subjects.19

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The Blues series asks viewers to think about how the Black body and the incarcerated body are regarded or rather disregarded across American history through to our contemporary moment.20 This body of photography, illuminated by an insightful essay penned by Akeil Robertson included in this exhibition catalog, demands viewers think critically about social structures and practices that ensure the perpetuation of the American carceral state. 

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The Philadelphia iteration of Wherever There Is Light enters the world in 2024, during a time where abolitionists’ voices constitute a strong constituency demanding awareness and change to the American prison system. In his 2021 book Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?, Jesse McCarthy provides instructive context for the photography featured in Wherever There is Light. He notes:

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Think of the real pressures of domination that shape the perspective of so many young black men, who by reasonable interference from their immediate environment see themselves in an overtly antagonistic relationship with a Foucauldian state that expends considerable resources to discipline and punish them, and none to secure a basic foundation for their flourishing. They are born squeezed between what [Thomas] Hobbes would have recognized as a war of all against all, where life is “nasty, brutish and short,” and what Michelle Alexander has called “The New Jim Crow,” a society that has shamefully crowned America with the highest incarceration rate in the world, with the federal inmate population increasing by 800 percent between 1980 and 2013. Unfreedom is everywhere, nowhere is safe, justice is the law of the gun. Let’s focus on changing these conditions.21

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WTIL photographers are on the frontlines of welding the camera to promote social change. They are united in their belief that creativity is the bedrock of liberation, allowing them to see and shape the world with a greater sensitivity toward self-definition and community.

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The photographs assembled for this exhibition embody Gloria Anzaldúa’s belief in the transformative power of creativity. Anzaldúa, a noted cultural scholar, describes the power of creative production, asserting:

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Creativity is a liberation impulse, an activity that transforms materials and energy. It stems from the impulse to use the capacities of your mind, body, soul, and other inner resources collaboratively, to create. The creative process demands the reconciliation of conflicting impulses and ideas; it calls forth conocimiento, a higher awareness and consciousness that brings you into deeper connection with yourself and materials.22

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For the photographers of Wherever There is Light, this body of art evidences the pursuit of a more insightful, in-depth and revelatory relationship with the camera as a means of personal and social transformation. In this exhibition, these photographers have combined the perspectives of two titans of twentieth century modern photography. They continue to affirm Alfred Stieglitz’s directive that “Wherever there is light, one can photograph.” Moreover, this exhibition and community of photographers demonstrates the veracity of Gordon Parks’s description of the camera as a “weapon of choice” to improve our world and uplift humanity.