One of the moody pleasures of this week’s Book Review is Chester Higgins Jr.’s tender-tough black-and-white portrait of the sisters Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, who are noted playwrights and the co-authors of the generational family novel “Some Sing, Some Cry.” Our reviewer, Kaiama L. Glover, writes that the novel is “a rich mix of storytelling and African-American history” following “seven generations of black women who, largely through music, are able to survive the violence of their national and personal histories.”
Higgins, one of the great photographers at The Times, made the photo on assignment for the Book Review at the home of Shange, which he said was packed with theatrical artifacts. Felicia R. Lee’s recent profile of the sisters in The Times’s Arts section noted that they spent 15 years working on the novel; that they describe their relationship as “symbiotic”; and that Bayeza, the younger, can be protective of Shange, whose intensity, Lee wrote, is undimmed despite a recent series of minor strokes. Higgins’s sensitive photo seems a brilliant reflection of their relationship. How did it come together?
After setting up a studio light box in a corner of a room with the most natural light, Higgins moved the furniture around for the pose, settling on a set of stools and a high table. “I first asked Ifa how she felt about standing behind her sister and hugging her,” he said in an e-mail message. “But Ifa objected to this idea, and I quickly learned that the sisters work as a team and that the photo would need to reflect this relationship. Following their cues, I tried to blend their concerns into a composition that spoke to who they each are and to their sister/professional dynamics. While shooting, I was charmed as the authors explained what their book was about, and that further informed my view of them. Gradually, after several different arrangements, we finally arrived at an image that reflected the best of our collaborative efforts.”
I asked Higgins what he was working on. “Presently I’m spending my vacation along the River Nile in Ethiopia. For decades, as a personal project, I have been making images of the ancient religious sites along the river, looking for the visual ‘voice’ that reveals the sacred memory of the great waterway.” Some of the results of Higgins’s project can be found in the “Before Genesis” portfolio on his Web site, along with much other excellent work.