a must.

On February 2, 2000, Songha Thomas Willis was shot to death outside a Philadelphia nightclub. He was 27 years old. The takeaway? A $400 gold chain. It’s the story that lies at the heart of Pitch Blackness, the first monograph by photographer and inaugural Aperture West Book Prize recipient Hank Willis Thomas, Songha’s cousin. It’s also a story that, sadly, occurs all too frequently across America. What makes Pitch Blackness so affecting is that Thomas explores not only the immediate effect of his cousin’s death on his family and friends but also the skewed perceptions of race, sexuality, gender roles, and economic empowerment that contribute to a cycle of violence.
The book consists of six distinct, yet cohesive parts, giving it a novel-like quality. It also includes two illuminating essays on the historical context of Thomas’ work from René de Guzman and Robin D. G. Kelley.
We start with pages from the Thomas-Willis family photo album, which are some of the most powerful images. They set a nostalgic, wistful tone, as they show Hank and Songha transform from babies to toddlers to handsome young men with easy smiles, constantly surrounded by various aunts, cousins, uncles, brothers and sisters. The wistful tone ends abruptly, replaced first by a newspaper clipping reporting Songha’s murder and then images of coffins, graves, tears, furrowed brows, mouths hardened into grim lines, scans of the autopsy report and the medical examiner’s photo of Songha, post-autopsy. It brought tears to my eyes and made me wonder how Hank was able to compose himself enough to take photos throughout that period. Or perhaps taking photos was the only way he could begin to process where he was and why.