Todd Gray

Todd Gray: It’s a photograph I took of Michael Jackson sitting on the lap of Chuck Berry.

Narrator: The photographer Todd Gray discusses his work Pax 3.

Todd Gray: This is a work I made when I was employed with Jackson as his personal photographer back in the eighties. And I use my archive to talk about African diaspora, to talk about post-colonialism. And I was thinking, who is the most recognized Black body on the planet? And of course, that would be Michael Jackson. So I don't use his likeness to talk about him. I use that likeness to talk about the African body, the Black body.

Then I have a landscape photograph of a mangrove in Ghana which is near where my studio is. And then a photograph of a person in a dugout canoe in their colonial whites.

Narrator: Gray has a studio in Ghana, and lives there much of the year.

Todd Gray: It really caught my eye because it talks about how one creates value on one’s body. How one mimics the colonizer in order to show that they are modern.

In the image you see this man in a dugout canoe going into the bush, into the darkness. And that is covering the faces of Chuck Berry and Michael Jackson. So theoretically or metaphorically, they're going into their heads, into their consciousness. So, we're going, as you're seeing it in the present moment, you're actually seeing something that's going into the past, perhaps. Or that was my idea about time shifting and retreating into the past, and going into memory. Memory of when we were in Africa. Memory that I'm hoping will be evoked with this piece by the viewer.