Interview: Asha Jamila Holmes
By Lia J. Latty
Published December 4th, 2021
Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?
ASHA: I didn’t really have a choice when it comes to being a creative person because both of my parents are creative people, so it just came more naturally for me to want to create. Now, being behind the camera, I never really was like “Oh, I wanna do photography.” My stepmom did photography for her job where she would do graphic design work and I started playing with her camera and I was like “oh this is interesting”.
How do you define your relationship with photography?
ASHA: I feel like I view photography as a reference point to get to something else, to a new process or to build onto. I often don’t visualize images existing alone by themselves, so that’s why I’m trying to dabble in multiple forms at a time. I think photography allows me to view things, in my mind it’s like an incubation, and heavily for reference. In terms of composition for a video or how a photo piece can directly intertwine with a sound piece, or begin a conversation in a performance.
As a young Black creative, what’s your view of the photo world/industry?
ASHA: As somebody that’s felt, even in my last few months of graduating, like “oh I don’t belong here”, I think the “industry” has made me feel like that. It’s because I don’t feel like the camera is attached to my hip in the ways that a lot of professors or just people that know about cameras kinda force this relationship of “Well if you’re a photographer then the camera has to be you at all times, you have to be shooting all time.” I have a spiritual relationship with this tool where I don’t feel dependent on it in terms of creating imagery. So, when it comes to the industry, I just feel like there’s a lot of previsualization of how Black photographers are supposed to exist in terms of just photography in general and it being such a new form of making, besides new media. Photography is like a baby compared to painting or drawing, so I feel that there’s so much we need to learn about the process of what it means to take a photo.
What projects have you been working on lately?
ASHA: I just finished with MARE Residency, and the two week period was really a time for me to hone into this sense of divine feminine and what that means for me as a creative and as a Black woman. The ways that softness and tenderness and the divine are contributing to my practice and have been, I’m now at a point where I’m being more intentional about how I can contribute to it. It’s like a mirroring relationship. The projects I’m thinking about now, I’m building a creative agency. The focus is for it to be global, but the source is definitely in Baltimore and the energy will always carry through from Baltimore because I feel like it’s something that’s very necessary, outside of just photographic media. There’s so much art here and so many really amazing creative people that need a voice and connection to elevate themselves in terms of how they want to be elevated and how they want to industrialize themselves. My next goals are to combine the great things I learned from school and the traumatic things and recycle them into a process where we don’t need these environments to feel validated anymore. I feel Baltimore deserves that, so that’s where I’m at.
How has attending the Mare Residency after graduating from MICA informed your art practice so far?
ASHA: I think overall, just the whole idea of being in a residency definitely shook me up because I was like “I’m fresh out of school”. It really forced me to transform my perspective of myself in such a short window of time. I was like “Okay, I can’t be small anymore, I can’t be small for people and I can’t be small for myself because people see me and that’s a good thing.” I guess that’s how it’s been really transforming my practice, which is really making me look at everything differently in terms of how I even am intentional about a project or who I wanna work with, what I wanna say and how I wanna present my work. It’s making me rethink, and I’ve always been intentional but there’s a newness to how I wanna see myself and how I wanna contribute.
“My next goals are to combine the great things I learned from school and the traumatic things and recycle them into a process where we don’t need these environments to feel validated anymore.“
What is your process like when you’re working with people you photograph or photographing yourself?
ASHA: It always starts with music. That is the foundation for me in terms of how I’m creating when it’s just me or how I’m creating with someone else I’m like “Okay what’s the vibe, what do you wanna listen to?” We take music for granted. I’ve never been a person where I can work in silence, especially not in the studio, but it really starts with music. That is like an icebreaker, even if I know the person and even if it is with myself because I don’t wanna assume with myself that I’m prepared to do a certain thing. There’s been multiple times where I’m like “Alright I’m gonna do this thing, I have these props”, and I get in the studio and I’m just staring at the camera and then I just go and do something else. That is more of a natural response, so that’s what I really look for. So it seems like music is the icebreaker to erupt that natural response for being in front of the camera.
How do you navigate the world of contemporary photography?
ASHA: Part of my initial self sabotaging in school was feeling like I didn’t even participate, feeling like I’m on the outskirts because I just didn’t visually or conceptually see myself. Lorna Simpson has always been a godsend for me and even looking at her work and some other photographers work, I just felt like I didn’t see me enough. But I’m learning now that that’s because I’m supposed to create the visual of what I wanna see and not become dependent. I feel like I don’t participate in it enough, but that could be my own assumption that doesn’t really add to the equation. I’ll say this: There’s something very specific and unique happening right now with Black people that are lens based artists that’s transforming contemporary photography into a valley of so many different things. Unless you are working very commercially, I haven’t really seen a lot of contemporary photographers work in ways that I’ve seen before. I guess I’m finding my place in that, in a form that seems to be eating itself as well as transforming itself before our eyes. Sometimes I’m like “Am I in it? Am I not in it? Is it a thing? Is it a group? Is it a time period?” I don’t know ‘cause we’re in the heat of everything right now.
What do you hope people take away from your imagery?
ASHA: I hope that when you are experiencing my imagery, that you can see that it’s created from very fertile soil. It’s created from a place full of intention and holds a lot of weight in my ancestry in terms of just me using the technology. I really want my imagery to really function as a seed for self-exploration and honoring those before you; this is how I navigate the world, the past, contemporary and future.