Nate Langston Palmer

My summer has been great. I’m in a pretty big period of transition in the kinds of work I’m doing, where I’m spending my time, and just life in general. The warm weather always gives me energy, so I’m all good. Thanks for asking!

I was pretty young when I picked up a camera for the first time. I was about nine or ten, and I think I was coming up right around the time when photography was really becoming accessible to everybody. My earliest memories of photography were as kids my brother and I used to get those underwater disposable cameras from CVS and take them to the pool. We’d take pictures of each other doing flips into the water and swimming around. That was so much fun. I was so fascinated by the fact that you could take pictures underwater. That memory definitely stuck with me.

I started working on this project in 2019 when I met a few of the dancers in Columbia Heights, not far from where I grew up. I saw them street performing and started to take pictures of them. We exchanged information, I sent them the photos, and then we just started hanging out after that. They introduced me to other dancers and the project has just grown from there.
I started the project with the intention of documenting the subculture surrounding Beat Ya Feet, which is a style of dance done to Go-Go music, the official music of Washington, DC. Over the years, my approach to photographing, my tastes, and my directives have changed, so the project has taken on new meaning and forms in ways that have felt pretty natural. Nowadays I’m thinking more about form and feeling.

The fact that this work is presented on such a large scale in the nation’s capital feels really important to me and it gives it a sense of urgency. It’s not a side of DC that the world usually sees. It’s also not a side of young Black men that the world usually sees, and showing work publicly at this size creates a lot of opportunities for visibility. In this case, the work celebrates a culture that belongs to Black people in a city where Black culture is being displaced. I think it’s important for people to see this and to become curious.

Of course there are sides of urban development that are positive. For example, neighbourhoods are safer and public resources are more available and reliable. But when an entire demographic of the population has to make way for that change to happen, that’s not fair. We want improvements to our city for all Washingtonians, not just those who can afford it. I grew up in a neighbourhood in NW DC called Petworth, which is one of the most gentrified in the city. Most of the Black and brown neighbours that I grew up with have left the area. Every time I go back, things are a little different from the last time. Again, all of this would be great if the changes were widely accessible and did not price residents out.

My answer feels a little complicated and unclear to me yet. I do feel like I want to tell stories that are positive, but I think all of the themes you listed can fall on a positivity spectrum and I always want to show humanity in its complexity. People are super complex! Black people have been presented as a monolith for centuries, and I want to push against that.
All that being said, I’m not interested in showing Black people suffering. I think history has seen far too much of that. I also don’t think showing positivity in Black communities on its own is the answer. I feel excitement, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, anger, love, grief, etc. just like the next person. The spectrum is what’s beautiful to me.

I feel a lot of pressure. That’s for sure. As a photographer, I don’t feel a whole lot of responsibility towards society though. I feel responsible toward my community and for making sure that I represent them in a way that they feel proud of, but as far as society at large, my hope is just that the work resonates with people in one way or another. I see the work as more of a contribution to society.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’m alone in the amount of pressure I feel. I’m self-employed in a country where your worth as a human being is placed on the amount of money you make and your level of career success. It’s the way we’re conditioned, and yet 70% of Americans can’t afford to buy a median-priced home! I do my best to unlearn all that, but I definitely still feel the pressure.

Sure. Beat Ya Feet is a really energetic style of dance that’s unique to Washington, DC. As the name implies, it mostly involves lower body movements while the upper body plays a secondary role. It’s also done specifically to Go-Go music, which is a genre from DC that evolved from funk music in the 1980s. I do want to mention that the dancers incorporate a lot of other styles of dance into their practice too. Growing up in DC, you would hear Go-Go music being played all over the city. It’s an inseparable part of the culture in the city.

I met the dancers while I was walking around Columbia Heights, as I mentioned earlier, and since then folks have been nothing but welcoming to me. I was taking pictures when I first met them, so there has never really been any questions about why I am asking to take their picture. My camera just comes with me. There was never really a time when I felt like I was having to make my case for taking pictures, I just started hanging out with dancers in the community as a friend and often as a photographer. Most of the dancers that I have met in DC like having a camera around because it allows them to showcase their dance on social media and other platforms.

I haven’t heard anything but positive feedback from the dancers, which makes me really happy. A lot of them have expressed how proud the visibility makes them feel and how important the project is to them. That really touches me and has been the most rewarding part of the process by a long shot. I was with Donnie when he first saw himself on the side of the banner that covered the side of the building and his reaction really made all the effort worth it. He was telling everybody who passed by on the street, ‘that’s me up there!’ That had a big effect on me and definitely strengthened my belief in this project and in photography as a medium. I haven’t come across much shyness yet!

On a personal level, I worried for years that I would never be able to put together a body of work that felt full or complete. It’s been really challenging at times, but I feel like I am at least approaching a body of work that feels full. That’s a big accomplishment for me. Whether or not people see something in the work, I feel like I have something to be proud of. Aside from that, this project has given me permission to make something beautiful just for the sake of making something beautiful, and that comes with a sense of freedom that I really value.

Thanks for the kind words. This is definitely one of those skills that takes doing over and over again in order to become good at. I remember arriving at a place where I felt really comfortable working a camera but absolutely lost when it came to posing a person. I find that if you can make people feel comfortable with the time you have leading up to a shoot or at the beginning of a shoot, their personality will start to surface more and more as the shoot goes on. Being a little goofy but sociable works well for me because it gives people permission to let their guard down and to be themselves and ideally get goofy too. A camera can feel really threatening, so it’s all about learning to disarm the threat. As long as I’m photographing, I think that’ll be a positive challenge for me.

I have some disagreements with this person but my dream has always been to photograph Barack Obama. Still hoping that that day will come.

I’m pretty focussed on Song of Sons for the time being. It seems to take on a new life every couple years, so I’m excited to see what the next stage is going to look like. But yes, I am still photographing for the project, still seeing what emerges, and still exploring new ways of presenting the work.