Wildstyle Paschall: Picturing Black Joy
2022 Juneteenth Parade Photograph by Wildstyle Paschall
For Wildstyle Paschall, the term social justice photography doesn’t just relate to photos like those of protests he took on the streets of Indianapolis in the wake of the deaths of Dreasjon Reed and George Floyd.
It also applies to his photos of roller skaters and hip-hop performances. The photos he’ll display during his talk on April 13 at the Eiteljorg Museum, in conjunction with the exhibition Changing Views: The Photography of Dorothea Lange will reflect this diversity in terms of subject matter.
Paschall doesn’t want all of his photography to be trauma-related.
“Yes, there's trauma,” he says. “But I also want to show other pictures of where people are much happier—somebody hasn't just been murdered by police. People are happy and passionate for other reasons as well. There's more to it and I'm not just the photographer that shows up when something bad happens.”
He started getting seriously involved in photography as a hip-hop producer around 2015. This was during a period of growth in his career, when he needed professional-quality photos for his artists.
“Initially when we had other photographers take the pictures, they weren't really getting me what I thought I needed as the manager to promote them,” he says. “And I said, ‘Well, you know what, I'll just try and do it myself.’ I ended up really falling in love with photography and ended up going to the shows and ended up staying the whole time and taking pictures of everybody and that's kind of how it started.”
But he soon became interested in using photography for more than just promotion. He began to see it as a way to dispel myths that had congealed around hip-hop, a form of music that has deep roots in African American culture.
“A lot of it was defiance and an act of rebellion; showing hip-hop as something other than what people would peg it as some type of hyper violent stuff where somebody's gonna get shot and stabbed,” he says. “The pictures that I was showing were of a really engaged, passionate crowd, people smiling and hugging each other and jumping up and down and having fun.”
He also started taking photographs outside the various hip-hop venues where his performers were engaged—and on the streets of his community. The center of that community for Paschall is the near northwest side neighborhood of Riverside, where he lives.
Photos by Wildstyle Paschall
His photograph that appears in the Lange exhibition was taken not far from that neighborhood, at a protest that occurred in front of the Julia M. Carson Transit Center in downtown Indianapolis. The protest occurred the day after the shooting of Dreasjon Reed by Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer Dejoure Mercer on May 6, 2020.
“It was a huge crowd out in the middle of the street in front of the Transit Center, and some of his friends were standing on a car, holding the sign saying I am Dreasjon Reed,” he says. “And that was the one, really, I felt like that captured everything about those early protests.”
But Paschall didn’t just take pictures of the energetic young crowd. He posted them on Facebook, and gave the address and times for the next protest.
“I think that helped get some of the word out there,” he says. “So it was dual action not just taking a picture to take pictures, but trying to be intentional about it as well.”
George Floyd was killed 19 days later by Minneapolis police officers, on May 25, 2020. On May 29 Paschall was present when a small group protesting Floyd’s death gathered at Monument Circle. Noting the small size of the crowd, he left. But then the protests started to grow in downtown Indianapolis, and he came back.
But this time, he didn’t bring his camera.
“By that time the tear gas was flying and I knew bricks had already been thrown,” Paschall says. “I made a decision that I'm not gonna get caught up. And I'll be damned if my pictures are used in court to prosecute somebody. So I left my camera at the house. I livestreamed on Facebook, but was very intentional about turning the camera away from stuff that I didn't want to ever see used in court.”
But photography, and an active social media presence, are not the only ways that Paschall works to address issues of racial justice.
In February, 2020, he published an article titled: “Indiana Avenue: The Ethnic Cleansing of Black Indianapolis” in New America. He subsequently published two more articles in that publication about the intersection of race and housing policy in Indianapolis.
As with his photography, he also wants to focus his writing on the day-to-day occurrences that he feels are overlooked in too many narratives about Black communities. To that end, Paschall wants to write about a personal passion of his: roller skating. He wants to do some videography on the subject as well.
But he doesn’t see his modus operandi changing just because he has displayed work in the Eiteljorg.
“It all has the same purpose that I've always had, which was to highlight the culture and the issues going on here,” he says. “ And if later on, people see a deeper meaning or see a correlation into something else, that's fine, but all the stuff that I've ever exhibited, I never took them just to be exhibited.”
His preference is to capture activities like braiding Black hair, hip-hop performances, and neighborhood gatherings, rather than protests. He won’t, however, shy away from them.
“Black joy,” he says. “I prefer to capture that, but it’s not always possible. You’ve got to document what’s going on.”
Selfie by Wildstyle Paschall
