06/09/2026
Last week, I spent several days at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, going through photographs of James Baldwin as part of my work as a consultant for a forthcoming exhibition curated by the phenomenal Karen Van Godtsenhoven.
One of the highlights was this snapshot of Baldwin and Toni Morrison in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Unlike the carefully staged portraits that helped construct Baldwin's public image, this photograph feels deeply personal. It wasn't made for publication. It looks like the kind of photograph that might have been processed at a local drugstore and tucked into a family album.
Here are two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, not performing literary celebrity, but simply enjoying one another's company. There is something wonderfully ordinary about it.
As I think through Baldwin's self-fashioning, this photograph reminds me that public intellectuals are not made through ideas alone. Their lives are sustained by friendships, intellectual communities, chosen families, and private moments of joy. Sometimes a casual photo can reveal more than a professional headshot.
