“The fear in that moment is that you don’t own anything,” Easy Al, a resident of the ;Fordham section of the Bronx, recounted to Vice, describing a traumatic confrontation with the NYPD. “You do not own anything. Because they have the power to take away your freedom. They have the power to take away your possessions. They have the power to take away your life.” Easy Al, whose brush with police reportedly began with him sitting on the street, telling jokes, is one of the subjects and collaborators in photographer Dru Donovan’s recent series “Positions Taken.” The black-and-white photos depict staged reenactments of real…
“The fear in that moment is that you don’t own anything,” Easy Al, a resident of the ;Fordham section of the Bronx, recounted to Vice, describing a traumatic confrontation with the NYPD. “You do not own anything. Because they have the power to take away your freedom. They have the power to take away your possessions. They have the power to take away your life.”
Easy Al, whose brush with police reportedly began with him sitting on the street, telling jokes, is one of the subjects and collaborators in photographer Dru Donovan‘s recent series “Positions Taken.” The black-and-white photos depict staged reenactments of real encounters between young black men in the Bronx and the NYPD, encounters that the civilians felt violated their rights.
EASY AL: We was all on the block, sitting in front of the building, telling jokes and stuff. And the police just ran up on us and they just started snatching everybody off the stoop. They put us all against the wall, and they had us on our knees. And my knees were killing me. They were yelling, “Who got the drugs?” We were all quiet while they threatened to beat us down. They had one guy shackled up on a leash, like a dog. ;
Police misconduct has moved to the forefront of national conversations, largely due to the injustices associated with deaths of individuals like Sandra Bland (and four other incarcerated black women the same month) and Sam DuBose. Donovan, in particular, was interested in photography’s role in the debate.
So often employed as ;a means for evidence and proof, photography is ;assumed to be subjective, unbiased and true. ;Shifting the conventional role of photography in the conversation surrounding police brutality and malpractice, Donovan creates staged photographs of authentic encounters between police and civilians, emphasizing not the violence of the moment but its emotional impact. Through her surprisingly quiet images, Donovan challenges our assumptions about photography while providing six individuals a platform to share their experiences. ;
The Huffington Post reached out to Donovan to learn more. ;
What initially prompted you to use photography as a way to explore the timely issue of police conduct?
There has been a national conversation about police and civilian relationships, and I’ve been thinking about photography’s role in that discussion. Civilians are using cameras to record stills and videos while police are talking about wearing body-mounted cameras. In this way, cameras are being used as proof, witness, to create evidence. Which I think is really important. But it made me think — is there another way to access and understand the incident through photography? Specifically, the emotional complexities of the experience.
How did you attempt to navigate such a contentious and difficult subject?
I am interested in working with people on both sides of the encounter, both civilians and police. But I started with civilians who had interactions with police who felt their rights had been violated or their power was taken away. I thought maybe there is a way to understand these experiences by asking people to recount the incident through photography. I am very interested in thinking about photography’s role in relaying these relations.
Is this the first time you have used photography to summon past experiences and traumas?
Much of my work deals with revisiting experiences in order to offer a varied perspective to the actual event as a way to reflect upon meaning made through the medium of photography. An earlier series dealt with my own experience being with a friend through his illness and dying process. After he passed away, I revisited certain gestures and interactions I remember witnessing or participating in. In “Positions Taken,” I am working in a similar way, by reconstructing events, but in this project I am revisiting an event that I have not experienced. Telling someone else’s story requires a lot of collaboration and communication.
BRANDON: I met up with my probation officer, and he said I had violated probation. At the time, I wanted to make a call because I had gotten driven up to his office by my mother. She had parked right in front of the probation window, but they had a two-way mirror. You can see the outside from the inside, but you can’t see the inside from the outside. I had my phone in my hand. And he told me, “You can’t make a call.” But I wanted to let her know what was going on. So when I tried to make a call, he called for backup. They came in the probation office and threw me against the wall, trying to get my hands. He had one hand touching my upper back and his other hand trying to reach for my phone. He got it and threw it on the floor and grabbed my other hand. They read you your rights, and after that, it’s like you have no control. They’ll put the physical force on you, arrest you, and forget about you.
How did you find your subjects?
I met a young art student, Justin Johnson, who has been involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and whose own work investigates race and identity. He said he could introduce me to his friend Ronny, who had a gun pulled on him for a traffic violation. I met with the two of them and we had a really frank conversation and I told them about my idea, my concerns, and they shared their experiences. They said they could introduce me to some of their friends who had also had confrontations with police.
The photographs were made in one afternoon in the Fordham neighborhood in the Bronx. Initially four men volunteered to participate. When we began working, all the subjects exchanged stories and talked about having more friends and family that they felt had experiences of rights violations by police. They were incredibly instrumental in building the community of subjects we worked with, and started texting friends and family to participate. At one point a man named Easy Al walked by, stopped to watch, and asked what we were up to. I explained, and he was eager to tell his story, and ended up participating.
Who plays the role of the police in the photos?
These incidents couldn’t be revisited without having someone be the person restraining. So I decided to ask the men participating to show each other and be the person standing in as the police officer, because I thought through this shared experience they would feel most comfortable restraining and holding each other. ;
MOHAMED: It was late at night, and I was going out to get milk for my son [pictured, center], who was barely two at the time. A police van followed me from my building, and as soon as I turned the corner, they stopped, and four or five officers got out. When I asked them what the problem was, two of them got their hands on me and put me against the wall. There was one guy giving instructions: “Check the crotch. Spread the legs. Make sure he doesn’t have anything stuck up there.” I felt like it excited them, like they were having fun with it. No matter how much they offended me, I knew I couldn’t defend myself at that point. They grabbed my wallet and saw my student ID, then started scolding me about how it was dangerous to be there. They told me they were trying to protect me from my own neighborhood. I lived right there. How could they protect me from being in my own home? Every time I walk by that corner I remember how I was pushed up against that wall. Standing at that wall to revisit the experience there with my son watching made me think of what he is going to deal with. It makes me want to prepare him better.
What were your goals for the series going in?
I wasn’t interested in recreating the incidents precisely how they happened. I wanted to make sure that the subjects felt comfortable with what was happening. My hope is that removal of the actual event allows for a different contemplation of the conversation around civilian and police relations, as well as question both photography and video’s role in witnessing and recounting these experiences.
How do the reenacted images diverge from the original event?
There isn’t a lot of aggression in the photographs. What is pictured is quiet and still. I was interested in getting to the emotional part of those moments through the re-visitation, as opposed to the chaos and violence, which shaped the subjects’ accounts.
You’ve emphasized in our previous conversations the collaborative nature of the series. Can you expand on that? ;
“Positions Taken” was a collaboration with the men in the photographs. We continued to talk after the shoot and discuss what photographs and text should be included with the piece. I worked with senior editor at Vice, Jacob Gross, and photo editor, Matthew Leifheit, and we decided to interview the subjects about their experiences, ;what it was like to revisit their experiences and their reflections on the photographs.
Ronny: I had just moved to New York, and I was driving with a friend back to my apartment. I was new to the area, and I accidentally turned the wrong way down a one-way street. Just as we made the turn, three cruisers pulled up with their guns out. I stopped the car with my hands on the wheel, and the cop yelled out, ‘Hands up! Hands up!’ So I put my hands up. And then somebody else yelled, ‘Put your hands back on the wheel!’ In my mind I was thinking that I could probably die over the stupidest thing, like putting my hands in the wrong place.
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Staged Photographs Reenact Real, Hostile Encounters With NYPD
