IF YOU GO

"Desire and Otherness: Portraits by Titus Brooks Heagins," Frankie G. Weems Art Gallery, Meredith College, Raleigh, through April 4.

The portrait of “Nikki”, 2009, dominates the gallery. She is young, dressed in an off the shoulders patterned dress, and has blonde dreadlocks. Her skin is fair. She is an albino. In Marianetta Porter’s catalogue essay she explains albinism as a congenital condition misunderstood over centuries which has led to unspoken cruelty and de-humanization. Her otherness sets the theme for Titus Brooks Heagins’ exhibition.

Heagins, a Durham artist with a studio at Golden Belt, and I talked on the phone about his theme. He explained otherness as a way human beings define themselves. He said we are fascinated by those we perceive as different from us and we need them because they make us who we are. He continued, “In America white people would not be who they are without African-Americans, and they would not be who they are without the whites.”

The artist has an impressive resumé, which includes being part of a number of museum collections and the recipient of several awards and fellowships. He calls himself an Afro-American ethno photographer and, on his Web site, writes, “At the core of my work is documenting the lives … of people of color throughout the world. I give particular interest to the descendants of Africa who are now living in the Western Hemisphere.”

His photographs, which he prints himself, are huge and hang unframed around the gallery. Their very largeness makes them confrontational. As I moved around the gallery, I found myself face-to-face with a tattooed couple, young men and older ones with bare shoulders, a female senior dressed in her Sunday best, small children, twin teen-age boys in front of a metal fence, a young couple in the yard of a white frame house, a scene in a Chinese women’s fashion store and the photograph of two people he titles, “Lolita Girls.” Except for the little children and the older woman, each represented something so different from me I felt I was staring and found I was averting my eyes while theirs did not swerve.

Most of the sitters are from the Triangle. Heagins told me he saw “Nikki” in a restaurant and knew he had to photograph her. “I finally just went up to her and told her who I was and the project I was preparing and asked her would she sit for me?” She agreed and during the long session that followed they talked about her medical issues and her feelings about female beauty. “She is a lovely woman and understood what I was trying to do,” he said.

He has written about his models as people of color; another point of otherness is how varied skin colors are. The men have no specific racial identity; instead, the artist presents them walking that thin line where masculinity and androgyny cross. And so we confront sexual identity as another kind of otherness. Tattoos are common today, but a man or woman covered with them seems bizarre. The white teen-age couple is, as Heagins put it, “poor whites,” and represent yet one more kind of otherness.

Of all the strangeness we see in this small but highly charged exhibition it is the “Lolitas” that are the hardest to understand. Two young Japanese girls are dressed like Victorian baby dolls and walk around a public park putting themselves on display. Heagins said the two in the photograph are part of a group of young women who have banded together as rebels against their traditional middle-class Japanese mores. He had tried for five days and could not get permission to photograph them. Finally, on his last day these two agreed to one photograph. He said they are not transvestites, pre-pubescent prostitutes or part of a theatre group; they dress up and go to a park where they show off. Of all the images in the exhibit, this one is so far from my sphere it really upset me and, after talking with the artist, I found his facts even more disturbing.

Heagins photographs his sitters with respect and dignity, yet he chooses them because they are perfect candidates in his quest for interesting people. He also knows they call up deeply buried prejudices in the souls of those who are not part of their group. They are different from us either by birth or design and their portraits make us uncomfortable. Are we uncomfortable because we find them different and are ashamed we do not immediately accept their differentness? Perhaps. Heagins pushes our buttons; he knows how to disturb us. He wants us to confront our prejudices, recognize them and, hopefully, come to grips with them. There is another part to this whole exercise, however, which, according to Heagins, is much broader and part of the dark side of human nature. We need the other and desire the other, because it helps us define ourselves.

Heagins is a portraitist of the highest order. He calls himself a documentarian; I would add psychologist. In our conversation, he said his photographs are about different spaces of ambiguity and he wants his audience to leave the gallery feeling uncomfortable. He knows how to read us and, if we are honest, we tolerate the questions he forces us to ask ourselves. They are questions and ideas which will haunt us long after the show is down.

Blue Greenberg’s column appears each week in Entertainment and More. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.