Always Looking: Titus Brooks Heagins (2025)

Titus is a Black man who enjoys photographing marginalized people, particularly (Black) transgender people, driven by a sense of social responsibility to improve the world (which is why the NPO chose this documentary, of course). It reminded me of a broadcast of the Philosophical Quintet (also from the NPO) about "monsters": monsters terrify us, but they are often simply people or creatures who are "different" (two aspects of which are united, for example, in Frankenstein's Monster). Transgender people and other queer people are the modern-day "monsters": their hybrid, unusual appearance is frightening, but for that reason, many people fight for their acceptance. For Titus, the transgender seems to be the new Black person: where once the Black person was the "monster," now it is primarily the transgender person. He wants to confront the viewer with this, and that results in captivating photographs.

Where the documentary becomes somewhat ridiculous is when the "woke" ideology, with its "cultural appropiation" critique, which Titus also espouses, surfaces: should a Black but cisgender man be allowed to take photos of transgender people (that question has already been answered above), and should a white woman be allowed to make a documentary about a Black man? Titus indicates that he would have preferred a Black person to make the documentary, but because no one else wants to (he was once a Black Panther and still believes he is being discriminated against and thwarted in his path to fame because he is Black) and he could use the publicity, he agrees to have a white woman film him. Fortunately, we still have the photos.

Translated from Dutch · View original