IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

In March 1998, I was in Syracuse, New York, for the month, creating some new work. I had no plans to take this photo – the project was not self-portraits – but that’s one of the beauties of photography: you can go somewhere with specific ideas and then create something else.

I was walking along the street when I saw a chaise longue in a shop. It just called to me. I loved the simplicity of its design and its colour, white, which I knew would contrast well against my black skin. So I bought it! There is a long history of women reclining on chaises longues in paintings: one of my favourites is Olympia, by Édouard Manet. I was also inspired by the work of the early 20th century US photographer EJ Bellocq, who took images of female sex workers, some on a chaise longue.

It is not necessarily an object associated with the male body. I wanted to place my Black queer body within the history of the chaise longue, but also explore how I could move away from that. Usually people will only look at Black queer work through a socio-cultural lens but, if you really interrogate it, you’ll find it fits within a larger history.

I was working in another photographer’s studio and pulled in the chaise longue. I bought the heels in Syracuse but the gloves, collar, fishnets and mask are mine – they’re all objects associated with S&M and kink play. My work is based on the experiential; for me, S&M and kink can be very intimate and tender. There are lots of ideas around sexual practices that are still taboo. In the UK, I still don’t see many images of Black people who are into S&M and kink in mainstream culture, or in public spaces such as art exhibitions.

I set my camera up on a timer. I was playing music by Marc and the Mambas, which set the energy. There were lots of outtakes, but there was something that just made this image work. It distills all the things that I was thinking about: pleasure and eroticism, the Black queer body, and masculinity. A lot of my work aims to bring a sense of intimacy or gentleness to the Black queer body.

There’s something about how I look back at the viewer. There’s almost a defiance, but not a harsh one. I’m looking back at you and saying: “I know you’re looking at my body.” My body is how I explore all kinds of ideas. I’m articulating my version of a Black British experience. There is a lot of texture, too: from the leather to the lace, to the heels, to the mask, to the hairs on my chest. It’s a very playful image.

I love photography from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I remember going to an exhibition of Ansel Adams’ work at the National Maritime Museum in London a decade ago and standing in front of one of his photos for half an hour because of the richness of the print. That’s why I love black and white. There is a richness to its tonality, and a timeless quality too. Colour, for me, is too distracting.

I’m also trying to convey a way of radically rethinking how we talk about Blackness and queerness by using the process of developing prints as a metaphor. If you think about identities as being like the chemicals I work with, they’re flowing, liquid, sensuous and porous. I want to create a conversation that moves away from the idea of identities being fixed. Every time I look at the image, it just makes me smile. I’m playing around with my identity – and doing it publicly.

• Ajamu: The Patron Saint of Darkrooms is at Autograph, London, until 2 September. His work is also in (Un)Defining Queer at The Whitworth, Manchester, until 3 December.

Ajamu’s CV

Born: Huddersfield, 1963.
Trained: ”Mainly self-taught. Studied photography, printing and design at Kitson College in Leeds (now Leeds College of Technology) for one term, but dropped out.”
Influences: “Tessa Boffin, Pierre Molinier, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Del LaGrace Volcano.”
High point: ”One of my highlights would be my Black Bodyscapes exhibition in Huddersfield in 1994. That was the first time I’d pulled together a body of work”
Low point: “Section 28 [introduced in 1988, which banned local authorities from the “promotion of homosexuality”]. It was this overarching ghost over what kind of work was funded.”
Top tip: “Do not be afraid of those ideas in your head. Push the limits of your own practice. Understand the history that your work is part of, then recognise your point of departure and how those two things sit together, if they can.”

He emerged from a largely commercial background to join the towering figures who defined an art form — street photography — in the 1950s and ’60s

“I was terribly worried. At that time, it was my first photo session in which so many people posed + most of them were children + 3 animals (3 sphinxes) participated in the photo session at once. At that time, I had been photographing for a little over a year, I didn’t have my own team, I didn’t have an assistant, and I didn’t have any help with the organization. On the eve of the shooting, a makeup artist who was supposed to do makeup for the girls wrote to me. The message brought me to tears: ‘I won’t come tomorrow, I’m afraid of getting infected by them’.

Then I realized how much people are mistaken about alopecia and how much pain it can bring to people who are faced with this disease. I wiped away my tears, got pissed off, found a new makeup artist, and got a great shot. And after the photo shoot, the mother of one of the girls wrote to me: ‘Anastasia, after the photoshoot Masha said for the first time in her life that she was beautiful. Thank you.’ I cried again, but because I was happy.”

You can click here to see the photos from that photo shoot.

London, UK

People visit Luke Jerram’s sculpture, Mars: War & Peace, a Model of the Red Planet, at the Kensington and Chelsea festival

Photograph: Raşid Necati Aslım/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

RUSHFORD, Minn. — As humble followers of Jesus Christ, Roger and Sue Ekern graciously agreed to share their faith devotion in a photograph.

The photo, a recreation of

Minnesota’s state photograph “Grace,”

has circled through Southeast Minnesota on Facebook and nestled into the Ekerns’ daughter’s cafe in Peterson, Minnesota.

The timeless original photo shows peddler Charles Wilden bowing his head to pray at a table with a book, bread and glass of water beside him. Years after the photo became recognizable, bookstore owner Jack Garren captured the thankful heart of his grandmother in “Gratitude,” seemingly facing the opposite end of the table as Wilden.

The meaning captured within the photos drew Rochester photographer Erin Young to place the photo in modern times. She came face-to-face with her idea when the Ekerns stopped by their granddaughter’s senior portrait session. As Eric Enstrom remarked of the peddler’s “kind face” in his 1918 photograph, Young said the faith of the Ekerns impressed her.

“They emulate such a good Christian life. They are big on helping others, going to church. They’re deep into their faith,” Young said, describing the Ekerns, who are from her hometown of Rushford, Minnesota. “It kind of was a perfect match because so many people admire them in their church.”

The modern photo shows them dressed in their favorite flannels as they pause to pray, or say grace. The elements of a small meal between them, the two converse with God. Young also created a set of photos with the couple praying together and by themselves to model both the “Grace” and “Gratitude” photos.

Young said her family joins in the tradition of prayer before dinner and bedtime. They hope “to teach our (two) kids to be grateful and gracious.”

“I think it’s just a matter of being thankful for everything God has given us, no matter how rich or how poor we are,” Young said. “Every day I’m like it could be worse and I thank God for everything that we have and just continue to pray for others that need more.”

While glancing up at a large print of her own Grace and Gratitude photo, Young noted the two Bibles set on either side of the farm table, and the bread, apples, grapes, flowers and cup of coffee. She described the items as “simple things that are just really good so it still shows that we’re grateful for everything we have.” Adding items like a cell phone or newspaper just didn’t fit the long-held depiction of prayer.

“The original picture was taken in 1918, so we’re 100 years past so I was like, ‘We have to show our modern life.’ And I just kept thinking about it, I’m like it’s going to look silly with a cell phone,” Young said. “I just couldn’t picture what it was going to be and I finally was like I don’t need anything else. If you are still a follower of Jesus and a Christian, nothing has really changed in these hundred some years.”

Young admired the original “Grace” photograph in her great-grandmother’s home, adding the photo to her own dining room. While the Enstrom website says the photo was

popular from the start in Bovey, Minnesota,

where it was taken, the mass production by the Augsburg Publishing House in Minneapolis transformed it into the “dining room” photo.

From family portraits to landscape photos, Enstrom shared his love of photography with his daughter, Rhoda Nyberg, who added oil paints to the “Grace” photo before the start of color photography, her daughter Kris Mayerle shared with KARE 11 in 2012. It was the oil-painted photo that became the state photograph in 2002.

Garren was inspired by “Grace” to create the complementary “Gratitude” in the 1960s using his grandmother, Myrtle Copple, as the model. Families, churches and restaurants quickly added “Gratitude” alongside “Grace.”

Today, Young’s recreated photo set is making its way into homes in the Rushford area.

“It’s not even that it was a replica of the picture, it was more like it fits (the Ekerns) so well that if they had never seen the Minnesota state photo they would still love this because it’s just who they are,” Young said. “It’s crazy because I didn’t think people would be interested in having (the photos), but they have really good friends that are like, ‘Oh, I would love a picture of them in my home.’”

In Young’s studio, Erin Young Portrait Design, just up the hill from their house, a photo of her grandpa on his farm and a canine with a service medal lay on the kitchen counter.

“For me at this time in my career, creating images is not just a simple click of the camera,” Young said. “I want to create meaningful images that are heirloom images.”

She also meets with clients outside the studio at their favorite spots to create “something that’s very sentimental for them.” Like walking her grandpa’s acreage as he looked over the fields he once farmed, and capturing his grin. It’s about “(telling) a story of who their personality is,” Young said.

In her 23 years of photography, Young said, “I’m really trying to create art.” Each photo shares a moment in time, whether a newborn baby, Santa Claus experience or people praying before a meal.

“All of this has sparked me to creating a story for some of these people,” Young said. “They’ve lived their whole lives in a certain career or following Jesus, and it’s cool to create an image of who that person is.”