Envisioning the Future, with Lola Flash

Transcript

Alexis Clements  

Hello and welcome back to The Answer is No. I’m your host, Alexis Clements and this week our guest is none other than Lola Flash. Flash is a photographer and activist whose work has been pushing boundaries around race, sexuality and gender for more than 30 years. 

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A member of the activist group ACT UP during the early days of the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, her work from the late 1980s often draws on themes connected to her activism. But she actually began snapping photos much earlier in life, including capturing portraits of her classmates for the yearbook back in high school. 

Today, her striking images, which most often are captured on large format film, not only feature portraits rooted in her constant questioning and celebration of identity, but more recently, her newest work is comprised of a series of Afro-futurist self portraits.

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As we discussed in an earlier episode, we know that there aren’t enough artists of color included in the permanent collections of museums. But since she was a young person, Lola has also been paying a lot of attention to who we see on the walls of these museums. Across her career at Lola’s work has demanded more complex understandings of what it means to be Black and to be queer. 

According to a 2020 study released by the National Research Group, 67% of Black Americans across class, cultural background, and gender felt that popular media like film and television fails to show the full spectrum of their lives. And 83% felt that representations of black life reinforce negative stereotypes. While Lola’s work doesn’t generally live on film screens or televisions, any of us who regularly visit art spaces and cultural institutions know that the lack of representation on those walls is even more paltry than it is on screens. And representation matters in those spaces just as much as in any other across her decades long career. Many of Lola’s choices and who to photograph and where to put those photographs are informed by questions of who will be most likely to see them—something she’s been thinking about since very early on in her artistic life. 

As someone whose work I’ve admired for quite a while now, I was really excited to sit down with her for this interview. 

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One of the things I always like to start with is to ask people what you imagined adult life would look like, and particularly if you ever thought of being an artist or photographer as a very young child.

Lola Flash  

Yeah, certainly I, ever since I was a little kid I had a camera. And, you know, I wasn’t taking political pictures then, I was probably taking more pictures of like my kissing fish and things like that. Or ski trips. I was lucky enough to go skiing. But I wasn’t really sort of career-minded when I was younger. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I got a proper 35 millimeter camera. And my mom bought me a darkroom. And so that’s when I really got passionate with it. And, you know, just hours and hours spent in the darkroom. 

So then when it came time to go to college, I was like, hmmm. Because the hometown I came from, Montclair, New Jersey, everyone went to college. So, you know, that was the expectations of my parents. So I thought, hmm, I’ve got a camera, maybe I’ll be a photographer. 

Initially, I was going to be a scientific photographer. I always loved school. You know, my parents are teachers. And I just love and still love learning. I really wanted to be a scientific photographer, because I love science. I love math. And I love the way that images through a microscope look like abstract paintings. So I thought, I’ll be a double major. 

Initially I went to a college that had both photography and science, and I’ll tell you the first semester I was like, the jump from high school science to college—I just did not, you know, I used to sleep with the book like as a pillow. I sat next to smart people, I did everything I could imagine to just understand the chemistry classes in college. So, luckily, I was in Maryland, so my school was very close to Maryland Insitute of Arts. So I checked it out and I ended up transferring after my first semester. And then I was totally immersed in being an artist.

Alexis Clements  

Did you have that sense already, like, I’m going to do this for a living?

Lola Flash  

Well, I did think to myself, like photography is something that, like, old men do when they retire. And I didn’t want to wait till I retired to do photography. That’s why I decided to go to college for photography. But, you know, my parents were just the best. They were just like, whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, kind of thing. [laughter] My friend’s parents were like, they would say to me, well, how are you going to support yourself? Questions like that. And you know, as a 17 year old, you don’t know what support means? You know, like bras, I guess. [laughter] So, I didn’t really know what that question was. So, I mean, my mom was a single mom, she seemed able to make ends meet all the time. So yeah, it’s definitely was not in my psyche.

Alexis Clements  

Going to a place like Maryland Institute for the Arts, were they talking about what it means to do these things for a living?

Lola Flash  

Not at all. It was a fine art college, which I really liked, because I got such a great underpinning of, you know, the foundations of art. But no, and as far as I can see, they still don’t really teach that part of it. 

And again, you know, I didn’t have parental pressure. They paid for my college education. And when I got out, I pretty much did every kind of job that didn’t need a college education—a bartender, a waiter, I worked in a, I think one of my first jobs out of college, I was working in a bakery, braiding challah bread. So, you know, my mom would sort of gingerly say, you know, what about teaching, and I’d be like I’m an artist. You know, bless her. You know, in hindsight, sometimes I think, why didn’t she just slap me. [laughter] She paid all this money, you know, she and my dad both paid so much money for my college education and I wanted to just do my art. 

So, you know, I did my art. And I had these, you know, jobs that didn’t really require a lot of stress or a lot of time and, you know, no homework. So I was able to just concentrate on my work, you know. So yeah, I appreciate so much of the way that they raised me.

Alexis Clements  

Did you have any role models in your life who gave you a sense that you could earn your living from being a photographer?

Lola Flash  

I had a few friends who were artists that were doing pretty well—painters. This friend of mine, Margie, who was a ceramicist, she still is today—she was, she never actually had a job other than doing her ceramics. But I didn’t have many friends that were doing photography full-time. Because I had such a commitment to fine art. Like other friends of my dad’s would say, you know, you’re a good writer, you’re smart, why don’t you do journalism, combine your photography with writing. I wasn’t interested in reality. I really wanted to be a fine artist and, and make my own, you know, creative statements. So that was never something that I thought that I wanted to do. 

And it’s funny, I had a job working at Martha Stewart in, so, the beginning of this century, and oddly enough, it was great, got a lot of free food and stuff like that. [laughter] I saw the way that the photographer’s worked. I mean, one thing is actually my desk was right where the fax machine was and I would see these faxes come in and see their billing, and I thought, oh, no wonder these people have like houses in the Hamptons, you know. As much as I wanted, at the time, a house in the Hamptons, or on Fire Island, it seemed like all they were doing was, you know, the stylists were setting everything up, and the lighting was all pretty just kind of not dramatic, you know what I mean? Even when I saw portfolios come through, I did not see a personal statement. So basically, they were just getting hired to push the button. And I thought to myself, yeah, I definitely don’t want to do this. 

I’ve never been driven by money, you know. I’ve always been able to, well, not always, but for most of my life, I’ve been able to pay my rent, and pay my bills and buy my film. That was really all I ever needed.

Alexis Clements  

So now we know you had a bunch odd jobs to make ends meet, but what were some of the things that you did to build your photography career once you got out of school?

Lola Flash  

I was really lucky when I first came out of college, well actually, a couple years after I came out of college, and I eventually ended up in New York. I met this painter, Arnie Charnick, who used to do a lot of amazing murals in the East Village—there’s still a few murals left at Veselka that he’s done—and he was totally not interested in, like, being in a gallery. His, you know, canvas were the walls in the East Village. And I think that was really very timely that I met him because, you know, coming out of art school, that was kind of the trajectory, and I didn’t buy into it. The audience that I was making my work for, was not the museum-going crowd.

Especially in the beginning, when I was doing a lot of the work around AIDS and HIV, it was really like, I suppose in some ways, I’ve always kind of been a teacher, so you know, I wanted to have work in restaurants or pubs, so that just like the ordinary person could see it, and then possibly strike up a conversation like, oh, that photograph, oh, by the way, I have HIV or something like that. 

So, you know, when I was starting off in the East Village, like I was waiting tables on Avenue A, and so I could make enough money to pay my rent—this wonderful woman named Sharon Ness, she let me live in her place on Sixth Street, East Sixth Street, and I could basically pay my rent with one night’s work. So then the rest of the time, I was free to do you know, photoshoots. You know, in the late 80s, there was not that pressure of money, because you could get these apartments for, you know, I think Sharon and I might have paid like $200 a month in rent. So yeah, I could make $100 easy, and that was that was my rent paid. So I didn’t have that pressure of money. But I definitely have those pressures now. [laughter]

Alexis Clements  

Having read a handful of articles and interviews with you, it’s clear that you’ve had this really strong commitment since early on in your career to represent people who are not usually centered in cultural institutions. What were some of the things that gave you that sense of commitment early in your career?

Lola Flash  

Well, I always felt really alienated when I went to museums—the combination of the white walls and the white people and the, you know, the white people on the walls, as well as white people, you know, walking around—it just was like an alien experience. So it didn’t really take me long to think like, maybe I don’t really belong here. I don’t see myself in here, other than the, you know, the guards, right? I always say hello to them, even to this day, I always make sure I speak to the guards. 

I love seeing the posters that the Guerrilla Girls used to make, and have all over and, you know, it clearly talked about the lack of female folks, and, and also people of color. I can’t remember, it doesn’t feel like they really sort of went into like, queerness so much, but, I mean, I am female and I am Black, and that was enough. You know, I think in some ways, you didn’t have to think about being queer, because being female meant I was left out, being Black means I was left out, so that didn’t even come into the conversation then. 

I used to also think, like I said to you earlier that I didn’t want to be in museums, and particularly the Met [the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City]. As amazing as that museum is, I just did not see myself, you know, until recently when the Kerry James Marshall show was up. And that was such a mind blowing show. I saw white people standing for hours, it seemed like, looking. The people I went with, I went with two friends who happened to be white, one of the friends, Tracy, we kind of moved away from the one friend Mills, and then we actually found Mills, she was probably crying in front of one of the, one of the paintings, you know. And that really kind of struck me and it made me think, okay, maybe, maybe when the Met calls, I will say yes, because I think that, you know, I mean I’m talking—I sort of swept from like the 80s all the way, you know, from last century to this century, sort of in a, in sort of a really kind of a quick kind of whirlwind, but that kind of a situation, that kind of experience is something that made me think, okay, Lola, maybe it’s time for you to reevaluate what’s changed in the world and that I need to keep up with that. You know, I think I think it’s something that most older people understand, that you sort of have a viewpoint at 20, 30 40, and now 60, right? If I think about it in sort of like its own little bubble, it’s quite exciting. 

And, you know, just going forward with that, it’s, I realized that the more and more I have these studio visits with museums—I never really thought about it in the sense that one of the things that museums do is that they have your work for a very long time. So in 100 years from now, you know, some little, young butch girl might see a photograph that I took, or might look like me and be like, oh, look, you know, those are Lola Flash’s work, and I look something like her. And like, how amazing would that be for, you know, a generation or two from now, to be able to—for me to be able to represent, show what life was like, back in the day, you know? So it’s a, I mean, it may be kind of corny, but it’s definitely a sort of full circle. That is quite exciting.

Alexis Clements  

Right? Yeah, no, I mean, I love hearing that sweep of history, of like, how your decisions and thinking about it are shifting over time. I know for you, one of the core things early in your career was participating in ACT UP, and photographing ACT UP, and being really involved in AIDS activism. I mean, it sounds like you already had a really strong viewpoint on where you wanted your work to live, but did participating in activism shift that at all?

Lola Flash  

I don’t think it did. Because, you know, I was so immersed in my friends dying, you know one minute being in the streets, next minute being in a meeting, next minute being in the hospital, next minute being at a funeral. And the cycle just kind of kept going. So I was very, you know, sometimes I look at some of the work that some people were doing, some of the writing, some of the photograph,y and some of the organizing, some of the work in within the science world, and I think it’s really amazing that people were able to be so productive. I mean, I was photographing at demonstrations. But I think, like, my emotions were just so strong, I was so, I guess, raw, you know, that, in some ways, it felt like time was standing still. And, you know, the agency of this virus at that time, was so devastating. And, you know, I often like to parallel to my grandmother’s experience, because, you know, my grandmother, when I would talk, and I’d say, what are you doing, Grandma, and she’d say, oh, I’m making some biscuits to go to a friend’s funeral, you know? And she’d ask me the same question, and I was like, yeah, I’m going to a funeral today, too. And how that just doesn’t make sense that you and your grandmother are burying your friends at the same time, you know. So it’s, a lot of it’s a blur. It was a constant war, that wasn’t being televised, and wasn’t on the front page of the New York Times.

Alexis Clements

And I’ve read in a couple of interviews and articles that, to some extent, the emotional, mental, and physical toll of that time was part of what led you to go to London. Do you feel that that’s a fair description of what made you decide to go abroad?

Lola Flash

That is the exact description. I mean, I guess that tied up too with my relationship ending, and I just thought, you know, I need a break. And you know, I got a round-trip ticket, I was going to stay for two weeks, I was going to use that as a base and then travel to other places. And I ended up meeting these really wonderful dykes, they were leather dykes, and I was a big old leather queen back then, and so I just started hanging out with them. Many of them were on the dole [unemployment benefits in Britain]. And we would just like play pool and drink pints of beer and you know, giggle. And so, and then I got a show there, and I ended up spending all my money on framing. At the time. I think I was not really that clever, I should have just figured out a cheaper way to hang the work. And they offered me, this was at First Out, which was a queer cafe, and they offered me a chance to work under the table and—hope the Home Office isn’t listening— [laughter]

Alexis Clements  

What’s the statute of limitations on that? Can’t be so long? [laughter]

Lola Flash  

And so, yeah, so when the day after Christmas, Boxing Day came, I called my mom. I said, Mom, I’m not coming home. So I didn’t actually plan on staying there for 12 years. The idea was just to kind of get away from New York and kind of figure out what was happening, you know. And once I started teaching full time, yeah, I mean, you know, I actually, my first Master’s [degree] was paid for by the college I worked at. I went to London College of Printing. I did a two-year Master’s course in photography. And my college gave me Tuesdays off, three years in a row, and they paid for my education. I mean, who, who does that?

Alexis Clements  

Not many places anymore, that’s for sure. I want to take a minute and jump forward in time a bit and ask you about a quote from an interview with you that I read in Hyperallergic this past summer, which I’m just gonna read so people can hear it. You said, quote, “My demands are such that if you want to use me, i.e. tokenism, the next step is to put me where I have long belonged, which is in the permanent collection,” unquote. I love that statement, because it’s such a strong form of refusal. When did you start to articulate that response?

Lola Flash  

I said that before George Floyd, bless him, was was killed. Seems very kind of like a vision, right? As my years have gone on, as my years on this Earth have gone on, I have definitely become much more confident. The show that I had at Pen + Brush gallery in 2018, it was so amazing in so many different ways. I mean, for me, personally, to be able to look at like over 30 years of work in one breath, you know, I would turn to the left, there’s work that I had done, you know, in the 80s, then turn to this, you know, the front and there’s work I had done in the 90s. And, you know what I mean, it was just amazing as an artist, you know, we don’t get a chance to do that. 

You know, I always joke, but it’s true, most, a lot of my, especially my analog work, is under my bed, and my prints are under my bed. And you know, it’s like, we work on one picture at a time, even though it’s part of a series, so we don’t actually get to see the breadth of our work. And I think that was, and I know that was very empowering for me. It made me really sort of be like, you are fucking great Lola, you know. Like, I was taught not to have an ego and you know, almost kind of like, shrug away from it in some ways. People always kind of noticed who I am, I think partly with my mohawk, I kind of stand out. But I felt like people started to really know me for my work. And, you know, I found myself kind of standing taller and shaking hands like, yes, I’m Lola Flash, you know what I mean? Like, I know, that was a real turning point in my career. 

And this year, strangely enough, I just said to myself, okay, you are 61 and a half now, and you have a large body of work that just keeps growing, and so you’re going to start writing to museums, and you’re going to say to them, when are you ready to have a studio visit? When are you ready? Not, can I please have one. When are you ready? You know. And to my surprise, they were like, oh, you know, we’ve, we’ve been thinking about you, or some even apologetic—I’m sorry, we haven’t reached out yet. It was like magic, you know? And it was like, why didn’t you do this earlier Lola. 

It’s cliche, but everything happens at the right time, and I know that I’m definitely ready for it, both with the kind of work that I have, the amount of work that I have, and also with this level of confidence. And you know, I can speak at the drop of a hat about what my work is. You know, I have my elevator talk ready. You know, I have to just kind of pat myself on the back, because it’s, it’s been a lot of work. And, you know, like I said, I was raised in a very kind of quiet, educated family where, you know, we didn’t have screaming shouts, shouting fights, we didn’t you know, we sat quietly at the dinner table and we discussed things around politics, or, you know, it was very “Leave it to Beaver,” but Black style, with only mom. [laughter]

You know, I, I say that because I, it’s frustrating to always see the family, the Black family depicted as something other than what I experienced. Because again, that makes my experience seem invisible. And so, all that to say that I, this idea of ego is not something that I was taught to have. And there’s like this fine line between being aggressive and assertive. And sometimes you have to be aggressive, you know. I knew that being assertive a long time ago. When you’re a little Black girl in America, you know how to be assertive, right? That comes with the territory. But being aggressive, you know, that’s not something that came natural, to me. And because I know that my story is solid, then I know when it’s important to be that just a little bit more aggressive. 

And so now, I understand how to navigate these different situations. This, this landscape of art, and the queer landscape, the Black landscape, you know, the intersectionality of all of them. And it’s a very, very good feeling, you know, I, I wake up every morning super happy to start the day. And, and I have to say that, you know, I, I couldn’t have done all of what I’ve done without my friends always pushing me forward. They didn’t need me to be in any collection for them to know, and to tell me that my work is important, to model for me, to help me find, you know, places to shoot. The more people like me that the society at large sees, the more the people will be accepting of us. So my success is everybody else’s success.

Alexis Clements  

I’d love to have you talk a bit about your most recent project, because it’s been really exciting to watch it develop during the pandemic.

Lola Flash  

I’m super excited about my new series that focuses on afrofuturism. The series is called “syzygy: the vision”. And it’s a self portrait series that considers, you know, what life will be like for us Black or Brown people in the future. And it’s very grounded in ideas around racism, sexism, and homophobia, and particularly looking at the judicial system and the prison system. And we all know that, well, most of us know that we have more prisoners in jail than any country in the whole, bloody world. And most of those people look like me. My step brother got out of jail last year, and it’s a long and arduous story, which I know a lot of people share. 

Heavy on my mind is the horror of America’s incarceration system. And the question of breaking free. Can our truth-seekers lead us to the place where we are superhuman? Do we have to be superhuman? My soul is hopeful for divine future where we are finally able to run anew, jumping in space from planet to planet, far away from the hashtag chatter and into a narrative of pure joy. And so, you know, it’s this idea that I’m this griot, telling this story that interlocks my past, my present, and my future.

One of the things that I love about Afrofuturism is this idea that, you know, we weren’t able to write our history, what’s written in history is not accurate, and often we’re not there. So now we have the education, we have the tools, us Brown and Black folks have the tools to now make that future into this like glorious story, that, you know, where we’re not being killed by the police, where we’re not getting jobs because our names are Hakeem. Just this whole structure of white supremacy is totally like, annihilated, you know. So it’s, so it’s so empowering to, even though right now I’m really stuck in this idea around incarceration, you know, even thinking about how those poor folks are in there with the coronavirus running wild—oh, my heart just really hurts, really weeps thinking about those people locked up. It’s, it’s just constantly on my mind. 

But it’s very inspiring for me to do this kind of work. Because it’s—I had really been steeped in very, a very literal documentation of my people. So it’s interesting for me now to be doing this conceptual work. To be honest, I kind of always was kind of, like, put my nose up to conceptual work, because I didn’t understand it. But the symbols that I’m using, it’s kind of like the beginner’s guide to conceptual work, I feel, so that people can really read it. I share it with my students, and they kind of see some of the images’ meaning, you know, so that’s really exciting. 

I could have never seen myself doing this, but it all just kind of fell into place. All the hard work is, is finally paying off. And, you know, James Baldwin—I’ve always loved to quote him—because he said, you know, being Black and queer was one of the reasons why he liked getting out of bed in the morning. You know, it gave him purpose. And for me, it gives me so much material to work from, you know. I am never ever, like, stifled for what project to do. Are you kidding me? What America has done to us? It’s like, you know, I suppose that’s like the good side, in a sense, for an artist who’s working with ideas around identity, for an artist who is really committed to the power of art. And I really believe that, people can look at my work and change their opinions. And if not, at least they can have that discussion. And I think, at the end of day to have discussions around racism, and all the topics that I deal with, is primal for us, going forward to a more equitable society. Drop the mic. [laughter]

Alexis Clements  

I was like, amen, we’re done, that’s it. [laughter] Amazing. Thank you so much, Lola, this has been a wonderful conversation. 

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Get links to Lola’s work and some of the other things referenced in this episode in the show notes on our website, theanswerisnoshow.com. 

Please also share your stories of saying no, whether on your own or with a larger group of artists. You can email us or record a voice memo and send it to theanswerisnoshow AT gmail DOT com. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at The Answer is No Show. 

Please take a minute to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcast apps, and share links with anyone you think might be interested in these episodes. 

Thanks so much to today’s guest Lola Flash and to Ali Cotterill, our co-producer and editor. 

And remember, collectively saying no to bad gigs can help us all get to a better yes. 

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