The Community Church of Washington, DC, Apr. 20, 2014 © Chris Suspect 2022
This coming weekend will be a busy one. On Saturday, June 29, I will be presenting a slide show and book talk about Truly Blessed at Maryland Meadworks in Hyattsville, Maryland. The event starts at 7pm and I will narrate the photographic process behind the making of the book. After the slide show there will be a conversation with Jason Hamacher of Lost Origins Gallery and Bilal Ali, book contributor and photographic subject. We will discuss, race, sexuality and faith, and the discrimination that faces queer African Americans on all three fronts.
On Sunday, we will celebrate the closing of the exhibit for Truly Blessed at Lost Origins Gallery in Mount Pleasant, DC, with a special live podcast of Stage Craft with legendary DC music producer Don Zientara and Alex Vidales of the band Pilot Waves. Zientara and Vidales will not only discuss the exhibit but also my early music career as a member of The Suspects and owner of Torque Records. Bilal Ali will also speak to the exhibit.
Details
Truly Blessed - Slide Show and Conversation with Bilal Ali and Jason Hamacher
Saturday, June 29th, 7-9 pm
Free
Maryland Meadworks
4700 Rhode Island Ave., Suite Bee
Hyattsville, MD 20781
Truly Blessed - Closing Reception with the Stage Craft Podcast
Sunday, June 30th, 3-6 pm
Free
Lost Origins Gallery
3110 Mt Pleasant St NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20010
About the book and exhibition
“Truly Blessed” documents a marginalized community’s response to racial and religious discrimination. Working closely with the Community Church of Washington, Suspect uses his camera to contrast the sacred and secular.
“Sometimes it is only through photographs that we can see the sacred in the secular, or the secular in the sacred. This collection, Truly Blessed, uses photography to forge a conversation between the sacred black church and secular sexual/erotic spaces, capturing sites where the body, mind, and spirit converge. Suspect’s attention to the subtlety of the performances of everyday people—engaging in rituals of their own choosing—illustrates the diverse and dynamic realities of being black and queer in America.”
– Jeffery Q. McCune, PhD Frederick Douglass Professor of American-American Literature and Culture, University of Rochester.
For more info visit
https://lostorigins.gallery/exhibitions/truly-blessed/
To see a selection of work from this exhibit visit
https://www.chrissuspect.com/truly-blessed