Raymond Thompson Jr.: On speculation
In this episode, we talk with Raymond Thompson Jr. on speculation. He talks about how his portfolio represents the many different disciplines and approaches that inform his work. He discusses his role as a photographer in understanding himself within history, and the challenges of working with archives that are often incomplete. Raymond formulates his idea of speculation in photography, as a way of filling in the gaps when facts are no longer effective.
What does photography ethics mean to Raymond?
“So much. The one way is ethics should be the operational code of how to engage...the subject-photographer relationship... So it’s really that negotiation between that relationship between photographer and the person being photographed. And that’s an important relationship to work through. The other part for me is visual ethics, or the right to be seen or not to be seen or representational ideas. I think about that a lot, especially about gaze–the male gaze, white gaze, Black gaze, and how we look. That’s how I look at ethics mostly, through that lens, or the idea of who’s doing the looking?” (44:15)
Raymond Thompson Jr. is an interdisciplinary artist, visual journalist, and Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His academic journey includes an MFA in Photography from West Virginia University, an MA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and a degree in American Studies from the University of Mary Washington. Raymond explores how race, memory, representation, and place combine to shape the Black environmental imagination of the North American landscape. Raymond has collaborated with renowned organizations such as The New York Times, NPR, the Associated Press, and many others. His work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions. He won the 1619 Aftermath Grant in 2023 and the Lenscratch Student Prize in 2021. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Raymond is the author of Appalachian Ghost, published in 2024 by the University Press of Kentucky.
You can see his work at https://www.raymondthompsonjr.com