Here’s another man who allowed me to photograph him for later inclusion in my online sketchbook. I met him at the Oakland Book Festival, towards the end of the day. He seemed somewhat disarmed by my request, but I showed him some images from this series of drawings, and he warmed to my request to make his portrait a part of this project.
Ajuan Mance
Another portrait from the spring 2015 Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.
Ajuan Mance
We ran into my partner’s old friend T-Mark at the opening of the Making a Scene exhibit at SOMArts. It was early July, summer 2015. T-Mark is a fascinating guy with a penchant for memory games, a great sense of humor, and a warm spirit. He now works for one of the national airlines, and his position has enabled him to pursue his lifelong love of travel. Whenever we run into T-Mark every year or so, he always has an amazing travel story to tell; and every time we part company, I wonder whether or not I should get a job with one of the airlines. Perhaps they could use an official portrait artist. Then again, perhaps not…
Ajuan Mance
The 7th Street Post Office, Oakland, California, Christmas Eve.
Ajuan Mance
At the, 7th Street Post Office, Oakland, California.
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The 7th Street Post Office is a portrait artist’s bonanza. It’s one of the places in the city in which you can encounter a truly representative cross section of the working men and women of Black Oakland. Whenever I go there, I see a least a couple of people I want to include in this series. I don’t always get a chance to add them, but this portrait and the next depict men who were waiting in line with me during a Christmas Eve errand to the P.O.
Ajuan Mance
Buena Vista Ave., Alameda, California.
I saw the man in this portrait as I was waiting at one of the few stop lights on Buena Vista Ave. He was walking with a couple of friends from a high school at the other end of this very long street, and there was something about the contrast between the fullness of the hair on this guys head and the sparseness of the hair on his face that reminded me of my own high school friends. I loved the way his wonderfully curly head of hair seemed to suggestion both awareness of and indulgence in the pleasure of embracing exactly who you are.
Ajuan Mance
I’m always fascinated by Black men who choose to wear relaxed hair. In the African American community, straightened hair is gendered in the same way skirts and high heels are gendered, and Black men who wear relaxed hair (or straight hair weaves, for that matter) are often doing so as part of an expression of their embrace of femininity and the body rituals associated with feminine gender performance. In other contexts, though, straightened hair on Black men serves as a mark of hypermasculine sartorial excess. Think Snoop Dogg in Shirley Temple curls in the 1999 music video for Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode.”
Whether deployed in the service of femininity or masculinity, though, Black men’s adoption of straightened hair almost always exemplifies the classic Afro disaporic aesthetics of excess, and that in and of itself is worth capturing in this series of portraits.
Ajuan Mance
The Hive: The Place to Bee, MacArthur Blvd. near Fruitvale Ave., Oakland, California.
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In the midst of posting my drawings from a day at The Hive cafe on MacArthur, I had to do a lot of travel in a relatively short time, and I had to do some of that travel away from my laptop. It’s good to be back, though, and I have lots of new drawings to share.
Ajuan Mance
East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest, Berkeley, California.
Ajuan Mance
These old gentlemen were hanging out in front of a West Oakland barbershop , commenting to each other on everyone who passed by.
Ajuan Mance