Photographer Chris Cook Is Ready to Start Making Work That Looks at ‘Black Life Beyond Struggle’

NOMINATED BY MING SMITH
33—NEW YORK

Chris Cook describes himself as a “native tourist” of New York who is dedicated to chronicling the life of cities. His book of photographs of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests has been acquired by the Met, Yale University, the British Library, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 

“The best moments come when I’m moving without a plan. I love the freedom of letting the neighborhood speak to me visually. When I’m in the studio, I’m experimenting—collaging, painting, scanning, printing. A good day is when I lose track of time and just follow a feeling. Jamel Shabazz, Roy DeCarava, and Ming Smith—their work taught me how to see with emotion first. Kerry James Marshall’s precision and storytelling, Gary Simmons’s use of memory and erasure, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s raw urgency all shaped how I approach my own visual language.

[My photos] ask: what are we preserving and who gets remembered? How do we translate personal memory into public record? And they ask the viewer to recognize Black life beyond struggle—there’s softness, pride, humor, style, love. What happens when we center those truths? I think a lot about the fear of erasure—of people’s lives, histories, and voices being overlooked or lost. I’m also confronting personal fears, like losing loved ones or forgetting where I come from. These images serve as a bridge: personal enough to reveal truth, yet public enough to spark dialogue.”

Chris Cook, Kids on the Block, 2023.

Chris Cook, Washington Square Park, 2023.