INTISAR ABIOTO moved to Portland three years ago. A native of Memphis with a background in dance, she runs a street photography Tumblr called the Black Portlanders (theblackportlanders.com). The site is heavy on photos and light on commentary, and its very existence serves as a gentle rebuke to the asshole observation—usually made by 23-year-olds who think they’re being hip and worldly—that “there are no black people in Portland.” I sat down with Abioto to talk about why she started photographing her fellow black Portlanders, and what she’s hoping to accomplish with the project.
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BLACK PORTLAND: “Sometimes with black history and culture, it can be so much about the past… and the past is relevant and you need to know it to understand things, but I’m interested in the present: Who are these people now, what are they creating now?”
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VISIBILITY: “There’s this culture in Portland that’s being branded now, and spread around the world, whether it’s through Portlandia or through the ‘makers’ and the food and the startup businesses, that it’s this beautiful place, this green place, the city that works. And that’s nice and good and true in many aspects, but I don’t know how much people of color are in that branding.”
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MISSION STATEMENT: “There’s so much talk about black people in this city, the history of black people in this city, and gentrification, and the trauma of the multiple displacements that happened and are still happening. I wanted the Black Portlanders to be about the beauty of the people, because that’s where you can find what needs to be found.”
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ALL TALK: “I like to talk to people. It’s funny ’cause I used to stutter really badly—I still stutter sometimes. I wouldn’t say this project was the thing that helped, exactly, but approaching people that you normally would not be able to talk to—because we’re in the habit of not talking to each other—is so rewarding. People want to talk.”
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ADVENTURE TIME: “It feels like an adventure, when I leave the house. That’s the thing that can get you really living—making an adventure in your own terms, on your own values, that contributes to your community in real ways.”
Intisar has a rad project and I’m glad it’s getting coverage. The below isn’t a comment on her work.
But isn’t it important to acknowledge, even as we acknowledge that there are in fact lots and lots of black people in Portland, and that a majority of Portland kids have more melanin than the average person, that Portland is actually the whitest major metro area in the country? Because that is still true, and people still frequently refuse to believe that it is.
Michael – that’s interesting. i guess I haven’t run across people who refuse to believe those stats. I far more often hear it phrased in a way that basically ignores the actual and historical presence of people of color in this city.
A sort of related point of clarification: One thing Intisar talked about a lot in the interview that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into the piece was that, as someone who moved here from the South, a big part of the project is about figuring out what defines “black culture” in Portland. I couldn’t quite find the pithy quote to sum that up (that’s the problem with this no-context quotes format, which incidentally makes a lot more sense in print than on the web). While the quotes here focus a lot on how people of color are represented, an equally important part of it for her is better understanding the city and culture she’s living in. Rereading the piece now, I don’t think that really comes through.