The Question That Persisted
What an Elder’s Insistence About the Plans For Festival Photographs Taught Me About Listening, Memory, and Stewardship
The older woman in yellow wore a warm smile as she sat calmly in a folding chair, unbothered by the hot sun blazing overhead.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy.
As I walked toward the Festival main stage with my camera bag slung over my shoulder and pulling the handle of a purple suitcase filled with copies of my book, she waved to me. And as I waved back, I braced myself for what she would say next: “Where are the photographs? I haven’t seen one since I asked you last year!”
Never mind that I did what she asked and emailed her a set of image files. Never mind that I tagged her on a special social media post dedicated to her in 2025.
This time, I was going to put this question to bed, once and for all.
I sat down on the concrete step next to her, wiped my brow, unlocked and opened my suitcase, pulled out a copy of the paperback edition of Compositions of Black Joy, signed it, wrapped it up and handed it to her.
Then I reached into my suitcase again for a display copy, handed it to her, and invited her to thumb through it.
“This,” I said with a smile, “is what has been going on with the photographs.”
For more than a decade, Sister Iraina has led the libation ritual for the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival in Germantown. Her presence is as much a part of the celebration as the music, the food vendors, the drum circles, and the families who gather each year to commemorate Black liberation.
Other than Connie Swinson, the Johnson House Historic House’s executive director and point person for the Festival, Sister Iraina is the only person I look for when I arrive.
This year, though, felt different.
I woke up on June 19th, Juneteenth Day, to an email from Medium’s editorial team, informing me that my essay, The Political Power of Black Cultural Gatherings, was selected as a Staff Pick. Readers like you were discovering my writing.
Later that same day, I launched the Germantown Juneteenth Festival Photo Archive. I was determined to make sure that Festival photographs, stories, and memories would have a permanent home, one that the community could readily access.
On Saturday, June 20th, I photographed the 20th annual Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival in Germantown, my 12th year. I had to get my head into the game one more time because so much was swirling around.
And yet the moment that has stayed with me most from documenting the Festival year after year wasn’t a speech, a performance, or even a photograph.
It was a question. Or rather, the return of a question, posed by a woman whose insistence and persistence motivated me to stretch and grow beyond my identity as a photographer.
Years earlier, it may have been 2016 or 2017, I can’t remember…Sister Iraina had asked me what was going on with the photographs I made at the Festival each year.
As the Festival’s official photographer, I was doing what photographers do. I showed up each year, made photographs, edited them, uploaded them to Dropbox for the organizers to download, posted images on social media, and occasionally emailed photographs to people who requested them.
In my mind, that was the job: Document the event. Deliver the photographs to my point of contact via Dropbox. Move on to the next assignment.
So when Sister Iraina asked where the photographs were going, I believed I had an answer. I remember telling her that if she wanted to see them, I could send her a few images to her email address.
Problem solved.
Or so I thought.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that Sister Iraina wasn’t simply asking for access to a photograph.
She was asking a much larger question, one that I wouldn’t fully understand for years.
At the time, I heard a question about pictures.
What I eventually realized was the question had little to do with the photographs at all.
The funny thing about questions is that they don’t always announce their significance when they arrive. Sometimes they settle quietly into the background of your life, and wait patiently for you to catch up.
Years passed, and I kept photographing the Festival. Each June I found myself drawn to the same things: vendors with their wares organized beneath tents, elders greeting one another, the children’s village buzzing with activity, activists, musicians, preachers, volunteers, and neighbors celebrating freedom in all the ways Black communities have always found ways to celebrate it.
The photographs accumulated. The ground shifted. By 2019, Juneteenth was recognized as a holiday in the Commonwealth. By 2021, Juneteenth had become a federal holiday.
Somewhere along the way, I began asking questions of my own.
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Who really sees these photographs beyond Johnson House staff, funders, sponsors and those who really insist on it?
What story might they tell when viewed together rather than one image at a time?
What responsibility do I have to the people—on stage and off—who entrusted me with these moments?
At first, I didn’t connect those questions to the one Sister Iraina had asked years earlier.
I simply followed my curiosity.
That curiosity led to an exhibition in 2023.
Then a book, launched in 2025 as a limited-edition hardcover and a paperback edition.
Eventually, it led to the Germantown Juneteenth Festival Photo Archive.
What I couldn’t see at the time was that each step represented an attempt to answer a question requiring a depth of understanding that could only be revealed in stages AND my readiness.
Last fall, I attended the People’s Media Camp, a gathering of organizers, journalists, storytellers, archivists, media makers, and community historians. Throughout the weekend, I listened intently as people discussed archives, preservation, access, stewardship, and community memory.
The more I listened, the more unsettled I became, not because the ideas were unfamiliar, but because they were and at the same time, they weren’t.
Allow me to explain.
What I realized a few days later was that I had been doing many of these things for years without having the language to describe them.
Yes, I understood how documentation could be an effective form of storytelling.
And yes, I understood the importance of preserving community histories that are too often overlooked, marginalized, or forgotten.
What I realized was missing was a vocabulary, a way of understanding how photography, memory, preservation, and access could co-exist as part of the same practice.
For the first time, I began to see myself differently, not simply as a photographer or documentarian or visual storyteller. Instead, I saw myself as someone engaged in the work of stewardship.
Today, I describe myself as a citizen archivist. I am completing a fellowship focused on preserving and archiving community media. I’ve begun researching doctoral programs in information studies and asking questions I never imagined asking a decade ago.
Sure, I can trace that path to many influences, experiences, and opportunities, but I can also trace it to a simple question asked by a woman at a Juneteenth Festival.
A question that stayed with me long enough to change me.
Back at the Festival, Sister Iraina slowly turned the pages of the book. For a moment, neither of us said much.
She smiled as she recognized the familiar faces of friends, neighbors, elders and people who had gathered year after year to celebrate freedom in Germantown. She beamed as she recognized specific moments as well.
Then she looked over at me. In that moment, I realized that the question she asked all those years ago had never really been about photographs, at least not entirely.
It was about connection and memory and knowing that the stories, people, rituals, and traditions that make a community what it is would not simply disappear once the Festival ended and the tents came down.
I sat and waited, and after a while, I got up, walked over to her and asked if I could make her portrait.
She agreed and I felt my heart expand with joy.
Dressed in yellow, the same woman whose question had quietly shaped the trajectory of my work, sat in a folding chair, holding a book that, in many ways, existed because of her question.
After I made the photograph, I thanked her.
I’m not sure she realizes how much her question, her persistence, her singular focus, changed me many years ago. Or, perhaps she does. When I see her again, maybe I’ll tell her. Or maybe I’ll find another way to show my gratitude.
What I know is this: in a moment when so many people are fighting to be heard, I have found myself reflecting on the transformative power of listening. Not listening as a strategy or performance. Nah, that’s not my lane.
But listening as an act of openness. The kind of listening that allows a simple question to challenge my assumptions, stretch my imagination, and reveal possibilities I hadn’t considered before.
For years, I thought I was answering Sister Iraina’s question. What I understand now is that the question was answering one of my own. It was helping me become the person I was meant to be.
A loop closed that afternoon. But two hearts opened.
