Conversations with Émeraude: Being a Filmmaker, the History of Racism in Photography, and running a Candle Business

February 27, 2022

“I feel like Black history month is largely about acknowledging Black history as American history. But since like, 2012, I’d say Twitter has been a major force in shifting the narrative of how people view Black people and like, Black life, and just how Black people live in general. So, I would say the narrative has definitely shifted with Black history month being more of an indication that Black people are still here. You know? But even with this shift, society has pushed this idea of past leadership and the lack of leaders in the Black community. They’ve kind of been like: ‘Here were the great leaders that we’ve lost and we’ll never have leaders like them again.’ And then they bombard us with specific black and white photos of MLK and Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones where they look grand in stature or speaking to large groups of people—the ones that we buy and hang in our homes. But it’s like, these photos shouldn’t be in black and white. There was colour photography during this time. There has been colour in film and photography since the 1910s. You know? Like, ‘Gone with the Wind’ was released in 1939 in full colour. ‘Wizard of Oz’ released in the same year in full colour… So, with Black history month, they’ve kind of kept us in the past when they talk about all these figures. But there’s been a lot of resistance in the last decade or so. Because there’s more. You know? There’s more to Black history than civil rights, slavery, Jim Crow, racist imagery, and racist films. And I know that there’s no way that you can distinguish Black history from American history. But we also need to move forward with Black history because the past is like, pain porn.

But even though they’ve kept us in the past, there’s also an importance of having specific months to talk about specific histories and achievements. Because representation matters. How do you think Mae Jamison got to space? It’s because she saw Nichelle Nichols play Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek. We need to talk about people’s achievements and continuously celebrate them. But we also need to acknowledge and understand that Black people don’t have to be great. I think if we actually think about it a little bit, the people that we focus a lot on during Black history month are Black people who are just… amazing. They’re people who are leaders. People who have been propelled, and have been extremely supported by other Black people, you know what I mean? Like, Rosa Parks was elevated because of the people who put her in that position. She was given a Congressional Gold Medal and inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. But like, she wasn’t the first person to refuse to give up her seat. There was a 15-year-old pregnant girl like nine months before—I forgot here name—but she refused to move from her seat. She was arrested too. And actually, she only recently got her record expunged.

So when it comes to Black history month, we should just be celebrating regular folks. We need Black people who are just doing weird shit on the street. Just like, normal Black people doing normal everyday things. You don’t have to go and open an orphanage and save a thousand kids. You don’t need a Nobel peace prize. You don’t need to do all of these things. What does that say about the state of Black life? It seems like, in order for a lot of us to even have a decent quality of life, we have to excel at whatever we do. A lot of us don’t have the ability to be mediocre.”

“Film, cinema, and photography have existed for over 130 years. And one of the major reasons photography was invented was to document and communicate moments in time. This might sound weird, but it’s interesting to see how photographs were used to document specific things, particularly those taken in South America and Africa. The early photographs of Africa made European people very confused—confused and horrified because people didn’t know what they were looking at. And they didn’t know because early photographs didn’t make the differences between black, white, and grey as clear as photographs that appear at the end of the 19th century. So people looked at these photos and saw dark figures, and used that as a reason to I guess, ‘prove’ that dark-skinned people were evil. You know? To say that they were savages. But it was a lie—a lie accepted as truth.

It wasn’t until furniture companies and chocolate manufacturers started complaining about how they couldn’t see the different browns of the bars of chocolate and furniture that they realized that there was an actual issue with the apparatus itself. So for the longest time, they were taking photos of dark-skinned people with no complaints. None. So this idea that they’re savages; they’re demonic; they’re so Black; they don’t even have features… It’s bullshit. It’s total bullshit. Because almost immediately after they brought that up, huge changes in photography are made. Like, the first colour photographs and the first publicly available photographic process started to appear in the 1840s. People started going to the movies in the 1890s. And, I mean, it’s insane because ten years prior, you could barely tell what you were looking at! Like changes to technology weren’t made when colonizers were taking photos of dark-skinned people; but a couple wealthy people couldn’t see their chocolate bars and all of a sudden—different ball game. But I’m saying this to say that racism has always been in photography. We just don’t talk about it.

And I don’t recall exactly when colour photography and colour film made it into the mainstream, but you see a shift in the 1950s and 1960s. White flight has taken place, the suburbs start to exist, and there’s a stark difference between the lives of people who live in communities with lawns and those that live in the city. You start to see hobbyists—people who take photos for fun, amateur videographers, and people who record everything. Kids are borrowing cameras from their neighbours and people are teaching others the ‘art of photography.’ Those kinds of things. 

And because everyone is obsessed with documenting every single moment of their life, you have people of that ended up taking photos of important moments in time completely by accident. I’m sure there are plenty of people who captured the assassination of JFK by accident. Or kids who met Muhammad Ali and got their mom to take a photo. I’m sure of it. In black and white and in colour. I sound like I’m hating on black and white photos, but I’m not. I’m just tired of looking at historical figures in black and white because black and white photos just make everything look like it was taken much longer ago than it actually was. It makes it seem like it was a very distant past when it wasn’t. Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley were friends but we have more black and white photos of Ali than we do Elvis. How can that be? What does that mean? I’m sure there are logical answers, but it’s just one of those annoying things.” 

“In my first year of school, I watched Wong kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love.’ That movie is a trap! Of course you’ll want to become a filmmaker after you watch it! It’s so beautiful and now I have two film degrees because of it. But that’s what did it for me. I watched that film and I was like: ‘Oh! Become a filmmaker!’ Not understanding that like, Hong Kong cinema, Iranian film, and like, Senegal and Brazil—those countries have incredible film industries that are ingrained in the culture. Then you look at Canadian cinema… What can I say? What do we have that’s comparable? People don’t even use the city of Toronto as Toronto, its budget New York. It’s embarrassing. There’s so much talent going to waste. 

When I chose the route of film, there was nothing my parents could say. I was taken out of Kumon at 12, so math was difficult for me. There was no way I was going to go and be an engineer if I didn’t understand calculus. I could have gone into architecture, but I didn’t know that was a thing because I basically had to figure it out myself. There was no guidance. Not from my school. Nothing. And with that there’s this mentality that plagues communities of colour. We’re limited to specific degrees with no resources or actual help. It’s this mentality of like: ‘I did it, so you can do it.’ But it’s like, if you did it, why aren’t you helping me? Why is it every man for themselves? Had I known that there were more visual arts options that actually bring money, I would have probably gone into architecture. I would have gone into jewelry design. I just would have gone into other things. But there just weren’t that many options for me because I didn’t know. So, I just took courses that I enjoyed, and by the end of it I was just like… film it is.

But despite that, I’m still working. I’m a researcher and I love personal histories so I focus on documentary. I’m currently working on three documentaries, all to be released this spring. But what else can I say? I just love film, and I love working on films. And I feel like it’s so important to society. Because it’s art. In any situation or event, people always turn to art. During the first couple months of the pandemic what were people doing? Watching movies, painting, creating, you know? People have emotional reactions to art. They want to see it, touch it, they want to react to it. When people go to Paris, they almost always try to squeeze in a visit to the Louvre because they want to see The ‘Mona Lisa.’ People love art, even if they don’t understand it. It gives you an escape, you know? And sometimes you need that escape, because, life is hard. And sometimes you just need to not be in your head. That’s what art is for.”

“I think my love for art also led to what I’m doing now. So, I started this candle business in November 2019. It’s called Catherine & Co. and it’s named after my mom! It was just a hobby initially. Then I kind of made too many candles and I had to get rid of them so I started selling them. This goes back to me talking about Black people not being able to just do things for fun.

But it’s been interesting because some months I’ll barely make any sales and other months I’m running out of products and am unable to keep up. I recently got a shout out from @sircandleman and have been introduced to a whole new market. Americans are serious buyers and supporters. It’s exciting and terrifying because the Canadian market is very small, I know all of the players, but the American one is very very different. There’s no ‘you should be thankful I’m supporting you’ it’s really straightforward. It’s ‘what does this smell like? I’ll take one of these and these and these.’ It’s also ‘when are you restocking this scent, my mom stole my candle and I need another one’ and I love it. I appreciate all of them, they’re so supportive and honest and even when I mess up, they give me the chance to fix it. So it’s been a wild ride and I’m excited to see where it goes!”

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