April 17, 2014.
At the time of this photograph, we’d been in Cuba for about five or six days. A few days living like beach bums on the shore of Varadero, and now on our third day in an old, midcentury modern styled casa particular that we found in Havana. I assumed we would be heading home the following day, but as it turned out, I’d never actually read our itinerary. Duh!

Two buses came and went, and they never looked up, and no one took notice. Save for the turn of a page, nothing moved. Face obscured by a weathered and worn book with no title or text of any kind on the cover. Bible?

Five fearless Black girls, one of which is my daughter. Brown Ballerinas and classically trained anomalies of whom I’d been making photographs in the streets and along railroad tracks and in front of murals for the better part of the day

Chicago, Westside...

A Black teenager rides a bicycle while chatting on his cellphone. He casts a perfect silhouette against a brightly graffitied, abandoned building. There are no identifiable features, nothing distinct… a cardboard cutout in the shape of a human being. Rolling by on two wheels - this metaphor for what it often means to be Black in these United States.

Monday afternoon, driving north on Milwaukee Ave through Wicker Park:
“Poetry! Poems! Poetry! Poems!” As happens so often, I am intrigued. I make a u-turn and add yet another traffic violation to my daily meanderings.