Shawn Peters

About the Artist

Shawn Peters is a still photographer and cinematographer whose work has ranged from music video to experimental short film and narrative feature length films to the limited series. He has worked on music videos with artist such as Earl Sweatshirt, Pharoahe Monch, Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, Bilal, and Common (in Black America Again, directed by Bradford Young, for which he shot the arresting series of black and white portraits). He has shot projects for directors like Sebastian Silva, Laura Colella, Raafi Rivero, and Sam de Jong. His ongoing collaboration with Terence Nance began in 2010 with the music video Something to Believe In, for their common friend Blitz the Ambassador. Peters also worked on Diasporadical Trilogìa (2016), as discussed by Ekow Eshun on his essay on “Liquid Africa” for liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies 5, no. 1. Since then, Peters and Nance have collaborated on An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012), and multiple shorts, including Swimming in Her Skin Again (2015), Univitillin (2016), and Jimi Could Have Fallen From the Sky (2017), before developing the Award-winning HBO limited series, Random Acts of Flyness (Seasons One and Two, 2018-present). Peters also shot the contemporary interviews for Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul (2021) and collaborated with some of his closest friends on As Told to G/D Thyself (Terence Nance, Bradford Young, Jenn Nkiru, Marc Thomas, Elissa Blount Moorhead and Kamasi Washington, 2019). More recently, he worked on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2022).

Peters has been interested in the sculptural possibilities of light since childhood, affected by the intimate spaces he shared with his mother as he grew up. At a young age, he would reflect light from mirrors he collected, experimenting with the ways light diffused and bounced off various surfaces. Now, as a long-time student of light’s specificity in each environment, he often highlights the use of negative fill light and advocates for reducing the number of lamps used in a given scene to create a layered tonality, allow the space to “light itself,” and foreground what each space already has to offer. His visual storytelling is focused on serving characters’ deepest emotions as they might be reflected in the way they interact with complexly layered visual environments. He credits his brief but consequential relationship to Roy DeCarava with encouraging him to pursue photography while focusing more explicitly on creating complex tonalities within the frame.

There are reoccurring formal elements in Peters’ visual language: in short films such as Univitillin, Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky, and Swimming in her Skin Again, he tends to accent ethereal worlds and construct rhythmic temporalities through formal breaks within the frame. Always conceptually grounded in the character’s inner landscape, he creates visual pacing through formal shifts which occur after establishing a sense of symmetry within the film’s composition. His use of long durational takes with fluid Steadicam movements often allows for accenting moments of visual disruption (although he has often also used the swifts and pans available to handheld cameras). These films often use symmetry to highlight medium shots where characters are addressing the viewer, adding to the film’s sense of estrangement, fragmentation, and otherworldliness. The combination of these visual elements speaks to Peters’ practice of challenging the shot progressions often found in traditional narrative works, in order to curate a cinematic space for stories centered on black interiority and imagining.

Peters has often remarked that his path to photography and cinematography has been a twisted one, with stints in IT technology and the music industry. Yet, the visual archives that sustain his practice are rich and deep. Crediting Barron Claiborne as the first photographer to approach black skin as a medium, Peters’ practice falls into the same lineage that links Arthur Jafa, Malik Hassan Sayeed, and Bradford Young. Indeed, Young and Peters met over their shared admiration for Sayeed’s work in Clockers (1995) and they have since become best friends and collaborators, especially as they both relocated to Baltimore, following their common friend and inspiration, Elissa Blount Moorhead. With particular reference to friendship and the work of collaborative practice, Peters has shared that he approaches collaborations with directors as a form of romantic relationship, a quiet give-and-take that he approaches with grace, generosity, and responsiveness. He describes this as a “beautiful struggle” and a “romance of intentions,” i.e., the shared project of birthing beautiful visual children.

SELECT WORKS

Cinematographer

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2022)

Crown Royal x NFL: Kick Off with Crown(2021)

Run the Jewels: Never Look Back (2021)

In Our Mothers' Gardens (2021)

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Really Love (2020)

Goldie (2019)

Earl Sweatshirt: Nowhere, Nobody (2019)

As Told To G/D Thyself (2019)

Adam (2019)

Piu Piu (2018)

Random Acts of Flyness (2018)

Where are the African Gods? (2018)

The Flying Electric (2017)

The Paris Project (2017)

Brooklyn, Day (2017)

I'm with the Banned (2017)

Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky (2017)

Farewell Meu Amor (2016)

Black America Again (2016)

Diasporadical Trilogia (2016)

72 Hours: A Brooklyn Love Story? (2016)

Univitellin (2016)

The Triptych (2015)

Swimming in Your Skin Again (2015)

Moonrising (2014)

Michelle Williams Feat. Beyoncé & Kelly Rowland: Say Yes (2014)

Keep Pushing (2013)

Fort Greene (2013)

Poses (2012)

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012)

From Fatherless to Fatherhood (2011)

Native Sun (2011)

Black Folk Don't (2011)

Clap One Day Extended Music Video (2011)

Blitz the Ambassador: Something To Believe In (2010)

Select Interviews

Film Roundtable Presents: Bradford Young and Shawn Peters. September 29, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrNBpOYEt6M

Susannah Edelbaum, “‘The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ DP Shawn Peters on Lensing Samuel L. Jackson’s Rare TV Performance” https://www.motionpictures.org/2022/04/the-last-days-of-ptolemy-grey-dp-shawn-peters-on-lensing-samuel-l-jacksons-rare-tv-performance/

Examining the BEAUTIFUL Cinematography of THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY with DP Shawn Peters, Go Creative Show, April 26, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnkaIHcxkS8

Black TV & Film Collective, Industry Speakers Series: Cinematographer Shawn Peters, April 27, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGOYwn4xaq0

Theoretical Frameworks

The Play of Light

Witt, Andrew. "Roy DeCarava: Eyes to hear." Philosophy of Photography 11, no. 1-2 (2020): 29-48.

Als, Hilton. “Roy DeCarava’s Poetics of Blackness.” The New Yorker, September 16, 2019

Cole, Teju. "A true picture of black skin." The New York Times Magazine (2015): 62-L. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/magazine/a-true-picture-of-black-skin.html

Cawthra, Benjamin. Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Lock, Graham, and David Murray, eds. The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Blair, Sara. Harlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.

James, Stephanie. "Extraordinary Shades of Gray: The Photographs of Roy DeCarava." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 80, no. 12 (2006): 58-67.

Duganne, Erina. "Transcending the Fixity of Race: The Kamoinge Workshop and the Question of a ‘Black Aesthetic’in Photography." New thoughts on the Black arts movement (2006): 187-209.

DeCarava, Roy. The Sound I Saw: Improvisation on a Jazz Theme. Phaidon, 2003.

Rachleff, Melissa. "The sounds he saw: The photography of Roy DeCarava." Afterimage 24, no. 4 (1997): 15-17.

Stange, Maren. “‘Illusion Complete within Itself’: Roy Decarava's Photography.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 9, no. 1 (1996): 63-92.

Wallen, Ruth. "Reading the Shadows—The Photography of Roy DeCarava." Exposure 27, no. 4 (1990): 24.

Friendships and Quiet Modes of Care

Sharpe, Christina, Ordinary Notes. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

Fowler, Daren. "Coming Undone: Aesthetics of Brokenness in Tourmaline's Salacia." liquid blackness 7, no. 1 (2023): 78-97.

DeClue, Jennifer. Visitation: The Conjure Work of Black Feminist Avant-garde Cinema. Duke University Press, 2022.

Bey, Marquis. Black Trans Feminism. Duke University Press, 2021.

Quashie, Kevin. Black Aliveness, or a Poetics of Being. Duke University Press, 2021.

Vourloumis, Hypatia, Sandra Ruiz, Stefano Harney, and Fred Moten. “Resonances: A Conversation on Formless Formation with Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Sandra Ruiz, and Hypatia Vourloumis.” E-flux 121. October 2021

Shukaitis, Stevphen. “Refusing Completion: A Conversation with Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, and Stevphen Shukaitis.” E-flux 116. March 2021.

Ngin, Zach, Van Horn, Sara, and Alex Westfall. “WHEN WE ARE APART WE ARE NOT ALONE: A Conversation with Fred Moten and Stefano Harney.” The College Hill Independent. May 1, 2020.

Crawley, Ashon T. The Lonely Letters. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Vancouver: arsenal pulp press, 2018.

Quashie, Kevin. The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond resistance in Black culture. Rutgers University Press, 2012.

See also Art as Process/Author as Ensemble