Even before the pandemic, I struggled with feelings of isolation. I go through bouts of depression and needed to make something that reflected that. So, using rocks from my rock garden, I built a plinth in the middle of my makeshift home studio. I scattered flour over the floor and it turned the space into a desolate hinterland – like the surface of the moon, another world for the viewer to step into. I set up the camera, took my position, placed the goldfish bowl over my head like a space helmet, and hit the self-timer.
When I saw the image, it felt like a direct reflection of my emotions. It looked like a marriage of two passions of mine: Afrofuturism, a cultural movement blending science-fiction, fantasy and history to explore the Black experience, and butoh, a Japanese avant-garde dance of the dead in which performers often wear thick white face and body paint. The contrasting materials – the coldness of glass, the ashen quality of the flour, the warmth of human skin – made the image texturally rich, giving it a depth that felt like another universe.
Afrofuturism has always felt like fertile ground for my work. It imagines worlds beyond Earth that haven’t been contaminated by white supremacy, where Black people can reimagine everything. There’s a freedom of the imagination in space, because there you can become anything and do anything.
I never intended to become a photographer. I was a bodypopper in the early 1980s, then I trained in ballet and contemporary, having a long career as a physical theatre artist for about 15 years. I was one of the pioneers of hip-hop theatre, blending dance, theatre, storytelling and Black culture. I toured from the National Theatre in London to the Sydney Opera House, building my own dance theatre company that let me produce work all over the world.
In 2011, funding dried up and the company collapsed. It felt like my whole world did too. It seemed the performance world had said to me: “Your voice isn’t needed any more.” As Black artists, we get thrown on the slag heap so quickly – and once you’re there, it’s almost impossible to return. I swore I would never perform again. For more than a decade, I didn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting myself out there again.
Then, as I packed up the company office, I found an old camera – just a simple SLR. I started taking photographs of my daughter. I posted them on Facebook and people connected with the work and started suggesting new ideas: shooting on manual, trying out different lenses, tweaking my composition. I was learning directly from my audience. It felt like a revelation: on social media, I could create work without having to ask for permission, chase grants, or get sign-off from performance spaces – all of the stuff that haunted my old life.
I realised I could go straight to market, straight to the audience. It allowed me to reinvent myself and, for a long time, I hid my past as a performer. Very few of my Instagram followers knew I had already lived one professional life. But even while I avoided the theatre, the skills from that world translated directly into my photography. I knew how bodies moved, how light and shadow work. I knew how to produce a scene. I distilled everything I had learned over decades in 3D art forms into 2D images.
Over the years, directors and creatives who knew my earlier work have asked me to return to the stage. Until last year, I refused. But my photography has allowed me to rediscover my creative self and, last year, I premiered Find Your Eyes at Manchester international festival, a show that integrates my photography and my stage work. It’s just returned from the Venice Biennale and is about to tour the world.
It’s a bittersweet moment. I have spent so long working alone, in the privacy of my own space, that I’m hypersensitive about being back out in the world. On one level, it is a homecoming – a return to one of the great loves of my life. On the other, it feels like a new start, almost like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I now realise that I needed to lose everything in order to be reborn.
Find Your Eyes is at the Dublin theatre festival, 10-12 October.
Benji Reid’s CV
Born: Manchester, 1966
Trained: “Self-taught in photography. In dance, theatre and lighting design, the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.”
Influences: “Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Denise Wong and J-Dilla.”
High point: “Dancing with Soul II Soul at the Soul Train Awards in 1990 and being hugged by Quincy Jones backstage.”
Low point: “Losing my company.”
Top tip: “Never stop playing – and don’t be afraid of failure.”
