What I am Reading Now…
Ajamu X
November 2024

For the past few years,  I’ve made it a goal to read five books every month. Mostly, it will be second-hand books, preferably ones that have notes, markings, and scribbles from other people and are signed to a specific person.

You can smell old, used books because they are worn, discoloured.  New books don’t have any character yet because they haven’t been handled and read by other people. My first ritual is to mark the date I started reading and the finishing date. Then I turn straight to the bibliography/notes section and tick the books I have and circle the ones I will add to my TBR (To Be Read) list, if there is such a thing called a book rabbit hole, then this where the adventure begins.

Even though I think we should finish reading books, if possible, I don’t feel we are obligated to. I think books are meant to be dipped into here and there and then put down again and come back to maybe months, years later or simply never.

As someone with severe Dyslexia, I try to listen to an audiobook of the book while I read. Ideally, it is the author’s voice I hear, but sometimes authors aren’t the best readers of their own work. This helps me understand better, and it’s not my voice I hear in my head. I always read with pencil/marker in hand. In the spring of this year, I spent time in the darkroom, printing my work A Sensual Chorus of Gestures (Amanda Wilkinson Gallery 8 June – 3 August 2024) working with Platinum prints and my current obsession Tosa Washi Japanese Tissue Paper. Not only is this paper seriously delicate and hard to handle when wet – I began to ask another question around beauty, process and production in the darkroom and it led me to question how we account for failure, mistakes, rejects, flows in the act of production.

Here is a selection of books I am studying with and have been with over the past few months.

Book 1

The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin (2023) (Audible and Book)

This book sits beautifully between a manifesto and a self-care book for artists and other creatives or individuals who want to live a more creative life. It focuses more on process and thinking and being with the work. I am drawn to this book as a photographer, because work by Black queer photographers (and others) are usually read through the lens of its content/identity, thinking and representation. Process and production are usually overlooked, even though both are intimately linked. To think through process, connects me to embodied acts in making, and being aware of what is thinking, feeling in the darkroom/studio.

This book is in direct conversation with other books; Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and rewards) of Art Making by Arthur Morey, David Bayles, The View from the Studio Door: How Artists Find Their Way in an Uncertain World by Tom Orland.

Book 2

Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go, Shaun McNiff (1998) (Book)

This book’s central thesis is that artists should welcome the difficulties and highs and lows that come with the creative process. McNiff’s book draws on Buddhistic philosophy asking the artist to set aside their ego (which is difficult) and let the process lead them on a journey. The artist may travel on a road that deviates from their original plans during this voyage. It requests that the artist give themselves over to the process (I compare this to being a slave or subordinate in the context of BDSM). This book also emphasises the value of making errors and failing, as well as how these experiences may be fruitful and generate other new opportunities for areas of our lives.

Book 3

The Art of Is: Improvising as A Way of Life, Stephen Nachmanovitch (2019) (Audible and Book)

This delicious little book urges us to consider life as a kind of improvisation and is a book on living completely in the moment (when in the darkroom, I lean in towards Avant Guard Jazz in particular Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman).

He tells us (boom) that we are verbs, not nouns, and that we are constantly moving and flowing. This helps me to consider and reconsider the process and production rather than the final result. Important yes, as a fine art photographic artist, however, touching chemicals, being touched by chemicals, touching paper, being touched by paper excites me more than the final print. Having said that, this book has inspired me to consider Black queer life as forms of improvisations in the context of our complex and nuanced lived experiences. 

Book 4

On Failure – How to succeed at defeat, The School of Life (2022) (Audible and Book)

This book was challenging to read mostly because it offered another perspective on how I am in the world. Because of my temperament, I tend to think more on success than failure, and our culture is based on ideas of success. Failure is both structural and individual. The truth about working in the darkroom is that no photographer, or creative for that matter, can succeed in producing something without failing since the materials we use have free will and will of their own. This is not to say that failure is without its challenges, suffering, and frustration; rather, it means that when I approach making, failure keeps me closely connected to the production process and to my own material body.

Book 5

On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry (1999) (Book)

I’ve always had the feeling that a lot of books in a variety of genres gently call out to me when I visit second-hand bookstores. One such book is On Beauty. The previous few years have seen me dance with and around notions of beauty when it comes to using traditional analogue printing processes, especially with the platinum print. Furthermore, I’m mediating  on the statement, “Beauty brings copies of itself into the world,” as I write.

I’ve been considering more about how we discuss beauty/aesthetics, as it relates to Black queer cultural photographic production and in terms of living a Black queer artistic life.