To look without fear: Exploring What it Means to Be Seen through the Work of Frank Ocean & Wolfgang Tillmans
Written by Mikey Murry, Genre: Urban Arts’ Revolutionary Art & Culture Critic
I was scrolling on Twitter when I saw it: an announcement that the cover art to Frank Ocean’s album Blonde would be on display at the Museum of Modern Art. This discovery came a few days shy of my first trip to New York City. Call it divine timing or fate, but this image single-handedly became my biggest mission for my trip. Fuck a chopped cheese. Fuck Time Square. It was IMPERATIVE that I not only saw this photo in person, but I needed to take my own photos with it! I needed to use a Frank Ocean lyric as the caption! I needed to stunt on hoes via Instagram!
I immediately forwarded the tweet to my best friend Liv. Liv was going to New York with me and as a fellow artist and Frank Ocean stan, it was only right we embarked on this mission together.
Frank Ocean means so much to me, as a queer Black artist, as someone who is constantly falling in and out of love, as someone who just feels EVERYTHING so deeply. Blonde was and is so much more than an album to me. It really solidified its spot in my heart as not only my personal soundtrack, but as a testimony to the emotional spectrum we all experience. Much of how I experience Blonde is informed by my recent lived experiences: a breakup with a partner of almost five years, a very new and very queer romance, moving in and out of homes, growing as a creative. This trip with Liv to New York City not only served as my renewal, my second act of sorts, but as a reawakening of sorts for me, and the photograph, seeing it while also being seen and exposed, really struck me.
The night before our trip to MoMa, Liv and I ordered ramen and giggled about our excitement. The lights, the energy, the vibe of New York City, you really just cannot beat it. Then, to know we would be visiting the world famous MoMa and seeing this image of our favorite artist… chills. If someone had been eavesdropping on our dinner, they may have assumed we were talking about attending a Frank Ocean CONCERT. We must have sounded so silly for geeking over a single photograph, but I regret nothing. As artists, we know that even something as “simple” as a photo can be groundbreaking and life-changing.
The photograph was just one of the many on display within Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibit. Tillman, a contemporary German photographer and artist, once stated that we (the viewer) should “enter” his work “through their own eyes, and their own lives.” Much of his work is dedicated to capturing the complexities and familiarity of the people, places, and things that surround us. His special exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, brilliantly titled To look without fear, featured various photos ranging in “ecstatic images of nightlife to abstract images made without a camera, sensitive portraits to architectural slide projections, documents of social movements to windowsill still lifes, astronomical phenomena to intimate nudes” (MoMa Exhibition Description). The latter description of intimate nudes is a recurring theme in Tillmans work, as much of it is less about sexuality, but more about the person inhabiting the body. This brings us back to the sacred and innermost magic of Frank Ocean’s Blonde.
Ultimately, I think that’s one of my personal favorite parts of Blonde, about falling in love, about art and photography and Tillmans work. It dares us to be our most raw and vulnerable, and challenges us to not only look without fear, but to be truly seen as well.
According to my Apple Music Replay, I have listened to Frank Ocean’s album Blonde roughly 575 times. Blonde is a diaristic, vulnerable peek inside the world of American R&B singer-songwriter Frank Ocean. Frank’s universe is one composed of love, loss, self-discovery, and heartache, and while these themes themselves may not be the most unique, the ways in which the artist utilizes his storytelling and musical ability is.
Many of us fell in love with Frank’s ability to create relatable, poetic anecdotes about what it means to feel deeply, about ourselves, about our lovers, about the world around us. His work is self-indulgent in the way it captures the passion and fire that comes with loving and longing. It takes its time and does not feel the need to rush through the healing process; there is no sense of urgency. It is deep and thoughtful, complex and messy, the way we as human beings tend to be with one another.
When we finally found it, after hours of exploring, we were not the only ones struck by its sorcery. Other Black folks, ranging from teeangers to folks in their early 20s, huddled around the photograph. Each had their phone out, waiting patiently for the person ahead of them to get their selfie. (Again, onlookers would have assumed we were all taking photos with the man himself!)
This striking photo is of Frank in the shower. His hand is covering his face as he wipes away excess water falling from the top of his head, hair recently bleached and dyed green. He is bare, minus the silver ring on his pinky and the large band-aid wrapped around his pointer finger. The photo truly is striking, catching this relatively private artist in a moment of vulnerability: nude, showering, not even making eye contact with the camera.
Existing solely for the sake of such.
