Always Looking: Titus Brooks Heagins

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] [lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] - I can only do it up to that point.

- That's fine, that's fine.

That's fine.

- Shirt back on.

- Okay.

- I said, you're right, right?

Okay, all right.

Now- I think we're more like family.

You know, we've done, we do Thanksgiving together and we've introduced all the parts of our family to each other.

So we're pretty close.

We're pretty close.

- He wrote his contact information down on the napkin and asked me if I would, you know, come to his studio and let him photograph me.

And so I think maybe a couple of weeks later, I gave him a call.

- A couple weeks later.

- Oh, I can't even claim I was, - [Titus] When I saw her, I just knew that I wanted her to be a part of the work that I was creating, so I was really lucky that she agreed.

[gentle music] I consider myself a portraitist and I really like photographing people.

One of the things that I like to do is I like to photograph people from the back.

[gentle music] - I understand that I sit at the intersection of a lot of things.

You know, there's the fact that I'm Black.

There's the fact that I'm a woman.

There's the fact that I'm an albino.

There's the fact that I'm legally blind.

There's the fact that I'm queer.

We not even going to talk about financial access and all the other things.

It's like, just those five things put me in a place where it's like, "Yeah, these things definitely have a bearing on each other, and if I don't recognize it, I'm an idiot."

[laughs] - [Titus] I think all art is political.

I think that it's political from its creation.

It is political from the way that it is brought into the different communities that will view it.

[gentle music] What I hope my work does is to create this counter narrative of what is the view that's in the public, whether it's through the media or whether it's through just someone's impression of who other people are.

[lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] The body of work is called Inked, which is work that I've began in about 2008.

It's about photographing people who have tattoos, and it's also about photographing in a particular tattoo parlor called the Inkwell.

I built up a long-term relationship with Mike, who owns the Inkwell in Durham and also owned the Inkwell in Fayetteville.

And he essentially gave me free range of, you know, both places.

Told me I could come in whenever I wanted to and that I could photograph anyone that I wanted to that was willing.

[gentle music] A tattoo to me is a piece of art that creates this counter narrative about who we are and something that's as permanent.

As long lasting as tattoos really are, it has to do with commitment.

In the Black community, there is a history of tattoos, of scarification of the skin, and these things have been symbols to connections with families, with things historic about tribes, about things relating to manhood.

You know, it's how you build and maintain community because people within the community, whether they have tattoos or not understand the meanings.

My wife Maureen calls us going back to these things, she says it's race memory and it's something that's, it's in our DNA.

And where we may not understand why we do certain things today because of these traditions that have been embedded in us that we have not discarded, we haven't forgotten, but we don't necessarily think of the meaning as relating to Africa and that we're down there 200 years ago.

[gentle music] [camera clicks] [lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] I don't do a lot of shows, and it's not necessarily because I'm not really interested in it, but I sometimes find it difficult to find venues that want to display the sort of work that I do.

[birds chirping] I made a decision that whether or not I was going to get shows for any amount of work, that I had to keep on working.

I had to do this, I had to work the way I wanted to work.

Sometimes my images and my writings about my images are about the issues that they address, are not welcome.

[lively music] [lively music continues] I was picked on at school.

I was never a big guy, which I'm not now.

And so one of the ways that people harassed me was they, you know, they said that I was homosexual.

There was one person who was out in our school.

I decided, I said, "Well, since everyone's going to say that I am, I just made just good friends with him."

I mean, he was just a great guy.

We talked about intellectual stuff, we talked about TV shows, and I was like, "Yeah, this is me."

You know, I guess except that we love different people.

And I said, you know, what does that mean?

Doesn't mean anything.

So for me, when I'm working in communities about this, I'm trying to save me.

And that's what, that's why.

[lively music] I hope that people who view this work will see the beauty of the people that are photographed.

I have hoped that they will see the braveness.

I am constantly amazed at what it takes to say, "This is who I am."

And to publicly walk this world, this life in a way that's different from everyone around you.

[lively music] [lively music continues] - I like that.

Do you like much here on the studio?

- Yeah, I like this one, I like this.

What has been my approach and understanding of working throughout the diaspora is that I'm photographing people that I very well not just maybe, but I very well am kin to, and I have to understand that I can't be free until my cousin that's in Barbados or my close cousin in Cuba is free.

And that's the purpose of my photography.

[lively music] - I met Titus during the celebration of the Cuban Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

I think I saw him, he was in an exhibition about some, a trans person who was showing his transition.

We started to talk and he explained to me what he was doing, what he was doing in United States and in some other places and asked me for help.

[lively music] Since that we start to work, like every time he came, I help him to find people for his job taking picture of trans persons.

It's important what Titus is doing.

To give a legacy from people who probably nobody will remember in the future.

We are a community that sometimes it's like forgotten.

If I can make something so that the world can know a little more about who we are, which is our reality, our life, I'm proud to help.

- [Titus] How did your friends treat you or people you went to school with?

- My friends?

My friend can't understand because- I say them I'm a woman, and she said, and they said, "No, no, no, you not.

You not a woman.

You are a man."

Everybody say that.

But I can't believe in them.

I can't believe.

I know what I feel.

[gentle music] [camera clicking] [gentle music continues] - I wrote a paper in university that likened taking photographs of Black people and bringing them back and showing them in America to bringing back slaves in the holes of slave ships.

So the question for me is, why would I do something like that?

How would I do something like that?

Which led me to the point of where I'm trying to make certain that what I do is different, that it's not exploiting.

I've been working with the same person in the trans community for six years.

I do things for people in the community that, you know, the practice of, you know, giving people photographs, just trying to figure out a way of how to give something back and not just take from.

This is good.

[camera clicking] [gentle music] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] Knowing I have become like, you know, she's my sister, you know?

This is my way of saying to the world, "Here are people that you need to recognize and that you need to leave alone and allow them to live their lives, you know, the way that they want to live their lives because it's their choice."

Si, si, si, si, si, si, si.

Okay.

Si, okay.

[Rosario speaking Spanish] [Rosario speaking Spanish continues] [Rosario speaking Spanish continues] - As I have watched Titus and talked with Titus about his work, if you're looking at his body of work in the transgender community, we all live in homes, we all love someone.

We all have to figure out how we're gonna live and the kinds of people we want to be.

And I think that through these varying opportunities to engage with folks who've been othered, if for some of us will help us explore how we've been othered and how we ourselves were other people.

- For me, photography, it's the way that I get to fight for the freedoms.

It's the way that I get to show the humanity of people like me.

It's a way that I get to sort of slap back at these structures that continually oppress people.

[lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] - It is about the everydayness of humanity, which is frequently something that is forgotten about certain racialized, marginalized people that we are objectified and portrayed in ways that strip us in certain instances of our humanity.

There was something universal about his work.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - It takes quite a while to make a print over five feet long, but you see all the things you say, "Oh, I should have made this adjustment.

I should have done this, I should have done that."

So I print large because I like my prints to be as close to human size as possible.

I want them to confront the viewer.

It's not that I want to make the viewer uncomfortable, but what I want to do is I want to get people used to being close to people with dark skin, and I want them to get close to people with dark skin, with them looking them right in the eye, because that's something that African Americans have not been able to do, which is look white people in the eye.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - Titus is a remarkable humanist.

His work flows out of a long tradition of what Cornell Capa termed concerned photography.

And that's really just a term that is intended to imply that the photographer is not merely interested in documenting a subject, that they're interested in the fact that their photographs may be able to change the world.

[gentle music] - His projects tend to try to take people who may not have ordinarily have been seen, much less valued.

He wants to kind of bring them to the fore to say, "Here, you know, these are our brothers, our sisters, our aunts, our cousins, our mothers, our fathers.

You know, look at them.

You know, see them for who they are and not judge, you know, especially not judge from afar."

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - I not certain that photography is the calling for me, but I feel that it is what's left to me.

And so what I do is I take what is obviously available to me and I try to take it and twist it, turn it to use it in a way to say the things that I feel should be said.

I started doing it before I came to an understanding of how I was doing it, meaning that it was not being controlled by anyone else and that I could do it in any way, which I thought was important and that gave the visuals that I was interested in capturing.

[gentle music] - Titus is one of those artists who constantly thinks about his work.

He wakes up thinking about it, he goes to bed thinking about it.

He works out images, he's deciding angles of projects.

He looks at what other photographers are doing.

He looks at what's current.

It is always present for him.

He goes very few places without his camera, even in the grocery store, the camera's in the trunk of the car.

And the times that he's been without his camera, he insists he's missing the shot.

- Hold on, right there, just like that.

I constantly look at people.

I walk into a room and I'm trying to figure out the best lighting.

I'm trying to figure out who in the room I need to consider.

I do it 24/7.

Put your chin on your arms.

There we go.

[gentle music] When I started working in Cuba, I also simultaneously started working on a body of work that I called Dark, Hallowed Ground and Dark, Hallowed Ground was actually how I taught myself photography.

I'm self-taught.

I also started photographing within African-American churches and spiritual events in other countries that were related, to try to find some visual similarities.

So I photographed cemeteries and then I sort of backed my weight into the church.

Cemeteries, then funerals, and then I went inside and I would photograph church services, everything pretty much except for a wedding.

[gentle music] - His interest in ritual, and I don't mean just the ritual of say baptism or the sort of obvious rituals, but the ritual of taking the photograph and the way that he's interested in tattoos, for instance, in the way people intentionally mark themselves is so similar to the way people intentionally baptize themselves.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - [Titus] The Durham Arts Council asked me if I would be their photography exhibit for the Click photo fest.

They essentially left it open to the work that I wanted to show, and I decided that I wanted to show work from the body of work that I call Inked.

[camera clicking] [gentle music] As I started doing the work more and more I realized that it wasn't the tattoos that I was drawn to, but it was actually the people.

It was them, their stories.

It's something to catch someone's eye.

You inquire and you say, "Who is this?

This name, who are they?"

And conversation starts.

You know, it's how you build and maintain community.

[lively music] [lively music continues] Well, had I known you were going to be this easy, I would've gotten some sleep two nights this week.

- I had been working with this publisher.

They were looking for African American photographers to publish.

And I said, well, you know, you've got one in your backyard.

Who's that?

Titus Heagins.

Who?

And I went, "You're kidding."

And I said, "You just need to find his work and look at his work."

And you know, I was talking to the guy a few weeks later and I said, "Did you look at Titus's work?"

And he says, "Yeah, he's too difficult."

And it was kind of like, "Well now, where did you hear that?"

I would say right off, a good part of that comes from Titus's very legitimate need to be taken seriously.

- Yeah.

[lively music] - My neighborhood growing up was African American neighborhood.

It was approximately six blocks by six blocks.

There was a freeway on one side, there was a white neighborhood on another side, Latino neighborhood, buttress the third side.

And there was a blank field and the blank field was where the Klan used to burn crosses quite regularly.

[dramatic music] I went to segregated schools till my senior year.

My father and mother were both born in East Texas.

My mother was a math teacher.

My maternal grandmother, Virginia Heagins was a principal and she was an African American woman who had a master's in English.

I think mostly what I learned from her was about what was racial privilege.

So one Saturday we went to Livingston, which was the county seat.

And while she was paying bills, a friend of mine and I, we went into Perry's Five and Dime.

So we're walking around in this store and Reuben was, that was his name, was very reluctant to touch anything at that time.

Black people could go in stores, but you had to be very careful with what you handled.

And I freely just picked up stuff.

I remember picking up something and one of the clerks, I saw her coming over.

I noticed that Reuben just suddenly became afraid.

And so I turned, and as I turned to the woman, someone else, another woman, white, stopped her and said, "That's Miss Heagins' grandson, leave him alone."

I've never felt myself and unequal to anyone.

That's where I was as a young man.

That was because of my mother and grandmother.

And I didn't think about what the repercussions, you know, were going to be.

So there were some things that was all right for some people to do.

And there were some things that were red flags for others.

And I simply said that throughout my life, I was always gonna be one of the people that just did whatever I wanted to do, no matter what the cost.

And said what I wanted to say, no matter what the cost.

And that's what I've done.

[lively music] When I was forcibly transferred to the white school, I was placed in remedial classes.

I had been pretty much a straight A student.

I was part of the smartest five kids in the Black school.

So I applied to MIT and Stanford.

Got into both schools.

Unfortunately, my parents went into terrible financial problems and I was unable to do that.

And I applied to the University of Houston to their school of architecture.

Tuition was really cheap at that time.

And so I went to register and I was told that I may have been accepted into the University of Houston, but I wasn't accepted into the College of Architecture.

So they asked me to bring my drawings, I brought my drawings and they told me that I didn't do them.

And I said, "Of course I did."

They gave me a project.

When I did the problem, I brought it in, brought in the drawings.

There were five faculty there trying to decide.

Four of them said that nothing like that would ever work.

You know, they just basically trashed everything I did.

One guy said, "No, this guy's got the answer to the problem."

I felt this was another effort to just simply keep me out of the school.

I got angry, said some nasty things to them, and left and never pursued architecture again.

That was another case of having the ability to do something, but someone else simply says, you can't do this simply because of who you are.

So yeah.

[lively music] I was bitter.

A lot of people say I'm angry and I'm sure I am as I'm sure that most people would be, would be angry.

[lively music] In my life I've been a Black Panther, I've been a member of People's Party too, which was an offshoot of an organization similar, you know, to the Panthers.

I almost became a Black Muslim and probably didn't because I'm just not religious.

I've been pretty radical in my life.

Yeah, yeah.

- Titus does have a prickly personality, especially where his art is concerned.

Also, growing up in Texas under difficult circumstances, he does not feel like he should back down.

He's uncompromising and that sometimes can cause some friction.

I think one of his journeys in his life is learning when pull and when to take that flow back and forth to come to the equilibrium where, you know, everything is just right.

Sometimes I wish he was a little bit easier on himself, but if he were, then he wouldn't be Titus.

- Ready?

Let's do it.

- Yeah, I'll be right back.

I went to work in Washington for US Department of Transportation, and I moved into a condominium complex called the Car Barn, and that is where I met Titus.

I had a number of my girlfriends come to visit from Philadelphia.

- [Titus] It was my birthday.

I had a camera and I wanted a photograph on my birthday, and I had seen someone moving in with a camera.

And so I knocked on the door, I introduced myself, I said, "Hi, I am Titus Brooks live right here."

And I like, I saw someone with the camera, could I find that person and ask them to take my picture?

They thought it was a big come on.

And they all just, they all broke out laughing.

And, but I was serious and that was all I wanted.

- It was genuine.

- It was genuine.

- Wasn't a pickup line.

- It wasn't a pickup line.

It was, I had better pickup lines back then, okay?

- Wanda had her Canon AE-1, we both had that camera.

Wanda went and took the photograph, and I would see Titus after that going to the mailbox.

I would see him walking past or going to the pool.

And so, I don't know, I think we were at the mailbox when we decided to go have lunch together.

And we just talked for hours, just talked for hours.

And that was the beginning of a 37 year relationship.

- I went to DC because Maureen was waiting to meet me.

[lively music] [Titus talking indistinctly] And so they put this here because- Somewhere in about 2017, I was contacted by the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina.

They were interested in doing an exhibition of the trans work.

I really began shooting the work as a standalone project from the Cuba work that I was typically doing in 2015.

I've thought about this work as being the last consistent body of work that I may produce.

It's difficult for me to work as I've worked, been working.

You know, I have this autoimmune disease, which means that for me, walking distances is really difficult.

So there are many reasons for me to slow down.

[gentle music] Some members of the LGBT community came to the museum and the museum asked them if they would take some time and come and look at some work about an exhibition that they were considering.

Initially, those people said they were amazed at the work.

They said the work was beautiful.

They said that it was respectful, and then they started asking, "Oh my gosh, who is this photographer?"

They needed to know because it was good work.

And they were told that the photographer was an older Black man who was also cisgender.

And then at that point, this group of people said, "Oh no, we couldn't work with him because he's not trans, he's not LGBTQ."

They had made this decision not knowing enough about me and what I had done with the people that I had been working with.

It was an insult.

- So this idea of who's entitled to tell whose story, it assumes that the story making, the storytelling, and the art making by those creators exists on a level playing field.

There is nothing from my perspective in terms of how he has created that body of work that is problematic from the perspective of the people with whom he collaborated and from the art itself.

Are we at the place yet where Titus is in a position of power where he somehow has an unequal relationship to his collaborators?

I have conversations with him that comes up in terms of his particular positionality, not only as an artist, but as a Black man.

- Yeah, yeah.

I'm still not sure of the reasons that it was canceled.

The reason that was given to me was I just thought was just, it was very thin, very, very, very flimsy.

It's important.

Who gets to speak for who?

Who gets to tell whose story?

- He's respectful with the life of the trans people.

He helps the person he is photographing in some way, because it's not only that he came to make a picture, he in some way help them too.

And this gives them the chance to, to show themselves the way they are.

- The question to ask is, is it okay for the, those who are othered and marginalized to be telling stories about other marginalized communities?

I mean, that's a very different question, right?

And that is the more valid question here, is that is what I saw happening there, and that's what I see happening in all of his work really, in these different contexts.

And that's probably why there was a receptivity to his telling those stories because of who he was and how he's positioned.

So I think it's an important issue to be discussing, but it's much more complicated than just the fact that you have a cis man telling stories of trans community in Cuba.

Because intersectionalities of both of the, you know, kind of identity politics at work here are relevant.

And it's very easy to simplify that which is, you know, complex.

[birds chirping] [lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] - [Interviewer] You and I have talked about this off camera, but I just wanted to ask you again and document it.

How do you feel about me, a white woman making a film about you and your life?

- The question is really loaded.

It certainly has to do with survival.

It also has to do with loyalty.

And it also has to do with what are the realities of the world that we live in?

Navigating this space where you realize that there are few opportunities for you to get, not just notoriety, but simple recognition.

And that those opportunities, they're few and they're far between.

And so when an opportunity such as this comes up, you need to be able to think quickly and to take advantage.

Now the question is whether or not as a white filmmaker, as a white documentarian, what is your business in doing this?

Well, to me, your business is your interest in another human being, in another artist that's doing what you think may be good work.

Now are you doing this?

In so doing that, are you excluding the opportunities of Black filmmakers?

And the harsh question, the harsh answer, and this is a hard answer and many people won't like this answer.

Before you called me, no one called.

After you called me, no one has knocked on my door and said, "You know, you need to cut this white chick loose and I'm gonna do this because you're, I just heard about you and I'm interested in doing this."

You know, had someone done this and convinced me that I need to cut you loose.

I don't know what, you know?

My grandmother always said to me, dance with the one who brung you.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] Getting ready to start.

- So that she can- - Okay.

- Actually get in the building.

- Okay.

Where does she take my camera?

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] I've never really had a mentor.

Mentorship is important.

Everyone was really excited about the mentorship.

[gentle music] And let's see, the plexi.

The purpose of the workshop is literally for them to create a portfolio.

So they will select a topic, a visual topic, and they will photograph this topic throughout the eight months of the workshop.

And then at the end, we will have selected the images that will go into a 20 image portfolio.

Two different types of light.

And along that way they will develop a vocabulary to talk about why this work is important and why you should take a look at this work, why this work should be exhibited.

- I see what you mean.

- Right.

- We're looking for why you wanted to photograph Tabatha, what you're trying to express through her with this pose.

- Right?

- Yeah, now these are, these are good - Because yeah.

- These are really good.

These are really good.

- Thank you.

- I wonder how you, how you're able to make people feel comfortable enough to photograph them.

And the fact that you're able to get into their homes as well.

You know, because a lot of people are like, "Whoa, this is my home.

Like, I don't want you all up in here."

- He spends his money and time to come stay in hotels here in Charlotte to work with artists individually.

He's got such a great heart.

- Titus was a ball of knowledge.

He's so informative and impactful and when he speaks, he just commands the room.

He's helped me with endless connections.

He said, "Just pick a direction and then he'll find a way to help out."

So that's something I'll always forever appreciate.

Titus wants me to teach.

He's is telling me to go back to school.

'Cause the game is stacked against you, so you gotta be as prepared as possible.

So I'll heed his warning.

- About 15 years ago, I was in this show at the field museum, and so I think it's kind of like, yeah, so when you told me you got in, I was like, "Okay, that's great."

You know, so there's a real connection.

So yeah, congratulations.

- Thank you, I'm really excited.

- Many times photographers create the work that they do pretty much in isolation.

You may create thousands of images in a year.

The opportunity for a photographer to show any of those images are typically slim.

For African American photographers, it's even more slim.

And to become a part of an exhibition that's at important venues, it tells you that you are on the right track and that you should keep doing what you're doing.

So you need to shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot, you know, until they're tired.

And they're like, "I gotta go now."

And then that's when you start.

Then you say, "Gimme five more minutes."

And then you let them go after 10 minutes.

- Okay.

- Okay.

And you're not doing that, I can tell you're not doing that.

- Yeah.

- Okay, all right.

[paper rustling] [paper rustling continues] So here's a stack of prints for the exhibition.

So there are two more that are 20 by 20.

The remainder are 20 by 30.

It's an important exhibit to me for a couple of reasons.

One, it's about doing something in the community that I live in.

It's also about exhibiting the work in the community where the work originated.

It's always important, I believe, to allow people the opportunity to see what I do with the work.

I want to make sure that the viewer sees their humanity and is able to relate to them and to understand who they are encountering day to day in the streets of this world.

[camera clicking] [gentle music] Hopefully the work is going to be archived and that it will be drawn upon by historians, by political, social, artistic creators to talk about in the future.

[lively music] When I show these images, it's not only a creative art and I think it's beautiful art, but it's also, it's a historical document.

It's proof positive that people like me, that we were here.

[lively music] As important as exhibitions are for photographers, my perspective on it is this, you'll have a show up somewhere for say, maybe three months.

You'll have an opening, which will be, what, three hours maybe?

The work pretty much will be in a spot unattended without any discussion if little at all.

If so, maybe little.

[lively music] [lively music continues] This is an image of Ben and Montrece.

I think that it's just a, it's a beautiful portrait.

There's something about the love in this relationship.

I like the embrace.

You know, showing that's here in this private space, in their home, in their bedroom.

It's just, it's one of my favorite images.

You want the work to live on, because I think it's important, I think that photographing people, you know, creating portraits is a way of giving them an extended life.

As long as the image is somewhere that something about them is alive, you know, it's sort of the way native people think and you know, many African people think is that your ancestors, you keep them in your memory, you talk about them and that they live within that space of that conversation.

You know, that realization, that awareness.

- Oh.

- Okay, there we go.

Yeah.

Put your hand out.

- I got it.

- The prints are in my living room, cluttering up my living room because they're just, they're so large.

I don't really have any place to store them.

The expense of creating the prints was so great.

I don't want to just destroy them.

I haven't given up on showing the work.

[cloth rustling] [blade scraping] [people talking indistinctly] [gentle music] - Can y'all hear me in the back?

I'm gonna try talk as loud as possible.

My name's Daija.

My project is called Extraordinary People.

My grandparents are getting older.

I didn't really have a whole lot of photographs of our family.

I just had like a real interest in people who are older because I feel like sometimes we as society can kind of outcast them a little bit and throw them away.

But if you really listen on some of the stories that they had to tell, you'd be blown away.

- I'm Merisa, a portrait artist and I feel like through this program I grew a lot in my photography and grew a lot in my confidence.

[gentle music] - I definitely think that I learned, you know, a lot about myself and my capability and also learned how to compose a photo and how to create an actual project and a body of work, you know, and provide meaning to that body of work instead of just taking a bunch of photos.

I think that is like some of my biggest takeaways from this mentorship.

Well, a couple things that I appreciate that you told us is one that with your photography, you're supposed to tell stories.

And then the second thing is bring your camera everywhere.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - You know, call on me.

- Of course.

You know, I've got people that I've been working with since the nineties and we're still in touch with each other and they still call me up.

- Yeah, that's what I wanted to do.

[attendees clapping] - You know, I look at Titus, I know there were other things he started out having interest for and I know that he would rather have been teaching photography or fine art as well as practicing it.

But he's good at it and every time he picks up a camera, his eyes light up, you know?

Or he's in a catalog or has a notification of a new lens or something and he's off talking to his buzz or thinking, "Do I need another lens," you know?

I take joy in that.

His career has taken us around the world.

[lively music] - Photography is important to the world because it is a mirror, it is a reflection of who we are.

It gives us a chance to really look at who we are honestly.

[lively music] - Titus had been intriguing me to go to Cuba for decades.

2016, 17, he had a trip going.

I met Titus there.

He was working from the morning till the evening.

By the end of the day I was kind of tired.

He was leaving very, very early the next day to Santa Clara.

And I got up and walked him out.

And I decided, I said, "Well, I'll see you later.

I'm going back to bed."

And I was walking away and you know, he turned his head and said to me, "This is the life I live for.

This is the life I live for."

[lively music] - Yeah.

[lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] - It's definitely something.

[lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues] [no audio] [gentle music]