Interview: Torrance Hall
By Lia J. Latty
Published July 23rd, 2021
Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?
TORRANCE: I always knew that I wanted to be an artist of some sort. I spent so much of my childhood merging books or video games I played with my own reality. I always loved sketching out alien worlds, creating characters and fantastical scenarios that closely mirrored my everyday life. I have so many memories of escaping to the woods and transforming into different identities I had fabricated for myself the night before. I really enjoyed playing different roles as a kid and the woods always acted as my stage. There was no judgement, no boundaries and I could become whoever I wanted to be. Photography came to me unexpectedly while I was in middle school. My parents brought home a digital camera one day and for whatever reason I had become completely infatuated by it. It quickly became a ritual to sneak into their bedroom everyday after school and teach myself to properly operate it. Figuring out the basics of image-making came very naturally to me and before I knew it I began taking images all over the place.
What inspirations influence your work?
TORRANCE: I’ve been very influenced by systems; ecological, speculative, linguistic, cybernetic, etc. I’m fascinated with the infinite flux of information (or energy) that surrounds us, ties us with the nonhuman, and influences our condition. With this, I’m often weaving themes from science fiction and mythology in hopes to re-conceive traditional humanism. A lot of what I draw from aligns with the posthuman practice in embodying different identities and understanding the world from multiple heterogeneous perspectives.
Along with structures, I’m equally thinking about entropy. So much of my work is driven by this inevitable decline into disorder and I’m intrigued by the possibilities that can emerge from chaos and contradiction. A lot of the characters I portray in my practice are definitely products of this – hybrid-phoenixes rising from the ashes.
Authors like Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin have also greatly impacted my work. I’m constantly using their tales of alien cities, sexless beings and cataclysmic nuclear wars as mirrors to help better recognize myself. A lot of what they speak about (especially from Samuel Delany) has revealed a lot about what it means – for me – to be Black and queer. Their work has really given me the vocabulary to express my own ideas and desires.
How do you navigate the world of contemporary photography?
TORRANCE: For a while I had a really difficult time situating myself due to my subject matter and use of digital editing software. I was really insecure about my practice and often felt very out of place – especially from my peers and other great photographers who usually worked in traditional analogue practices. For a long time I believed what “they” were making was “true” photography and that whatever I was creating had no place in that world. It even caused me to switch majors a few times during college. Thankfully I’ve sort of gotten over a lot of those insecurities, and it has allowed me to push my practice more and even open up some “portals” in collaboration with others.
How do you define your relationship with photography?
TORRANCE: For me, photography has become a technology for meditation as well as measuring and expanding the self. Since I primarily work with self-portraiture I have the unique experience of being both photographer and subject. Whenever I’m shooting I love to imagine the boundaries between my body and the camera blurring and working together as a single apparatus. I’ve definitely adopted my camera as an organ of some sort and I believe a lot of other image makers feel this way as well – I’ve always smiled at the idea of photographers as cyborgs working in perfect harmony with their light-sensor implants.
Since you’re working with themes such as mythology and science fiction, how did you decide to use self-portraiture to address those themes?
TORRANCE: I see a lot of the characters and stories that I create as extensions of myself – dark twins or fragments of my own identity. Due to this, it sometimes only feels appropriate for me to act them out. In addition, I tend to be very (very) meticulous about how a hand falls or the quantity of space between the lips. Many of these things I’ve found quite difficult to express to others. I do think I’m getting a bit better at explaining what I want when working with someone else but sometimes it’s just easier or feels more true to use my body as the “bridge”.
Also, as previously mentioned, when I was younger I had the urge to insert myself in the fantastical worlds I read about. Often, when I studied the descriptions of these characters or saw them in films or on television, I never really saw myself. I wanted nothing more than to see or read about a boy like me “cracking the codex” or jacking into cyberspace. When I discovered photography it felt like the perfect opportunity. It felt like I was finally being introduced to myself – or at least to the possibilities of what I could be.
“When I discovered photography it felt like the perfect opportunity. It felt like I was finally being introduced to myself – or at least to the possibilities of what I could be.”
What significance did you want highlighted using Black figures within the visualization of science fiction and mythology?
TORRANCE: I see the potential in using SF as a tool to navigate the black-queer experince and to release ourselves from the constriction of traditional humanism. The emergence of cybernetics has inevitably caused the boundaries between social reality and science fiction to become an optical illusion. Technologist and researcher, Jade E. Davis proposes that cyborg as a term is really another way of marking the other. Stating that “we use words like “cyborg” because we don’t have the language to talk about the black experience, more specifically the organizing role chattel slavery, signified by the black body, played and continues to play, in culture and society…” I’m still working out ways to better explain this, but it often feels more real to speak about my experiences through the eyes of a fabricated hybrid rather than my own.
How do you see your work evolving from this point forward as you transition out of college?
TORRANCE: I’m honestly not entirely sure how my work may evolve. I can’t even say that I’ll be the same person a year, a month or even week from who I am today. I still have so much to learn and experience but I definitely want to make sure that I remain malleable and open to the possibilities around me. A few weeks ago I dreamt that I was lying on an empty beach with my head just touching the shoreline. Periodically the waves would crash into the sand and sea foam would creep into my ear, whispering tales from it’s past and recalling the faces it had encountered over many centuries. It explained to me how it was the same sea foam that had created the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and continued to whisper its plans for future creation. Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about queer reproduction – how it has been presented to us in the past and speculating on how it may look in the future. I try not to stay fixated on an idea for too long in fear of digging myself into a hole but I hope I can honor that dream properly through my work sometime soon.
What do you hope people take away from your imagery?
TORRANCE: I hope that I am able to tie a knot between myself and the viewer and that they’re able to see versions of themselves in each of the worlds and characters that I create. I hope that my images are able to act as mirrors, mythologies or meditations on multiplicity, malleability and finding possible solutions in the alien, non-human or other-than-human. I hope that when this knot is tied, boundaries blur, possibilities emerge and rigidity is lost. Ultimately, I hope that Black queer kids are able to see my images and understand that their identities are immeasurable and in a constant state of flux. From that, I pray that they’re able to find peace, power and innovation.