Black Astronaut

'The road never lies, it only provides opportunity to see who you are and what you are truly made of'
Kamal X
From early childhood while growing up in Newark, NJ, Kamal X had a keen interest in connecting with different perspectives and voices. He found that cinema and still images were pathways to uncovering the stories beyond the world of his own.
Despite Kamal's early interest in visual media, it was after the untimely loss of his best friend to colon cancer that he redirected his focus from business to travel and self-discovery. Suddenly, understanding the importance of every single moment became Kamal's purpose. With this intention and the memory of his friend in mind, Kamal dropped everything to embark alone on a 5-year quest to travel around the world to find peace and meaning. His purhase of a Nikon D3300 one year into his travels created and cemented a passion for photography as a way to honor the full scope of a moment in a manner that is rooted in honesty, whether beautiful or painful.
Through Kamal's current style takes inspiration from legendary photographers of the 20th century such as Bruce Davidson and Richard Avedeon, his overall guiding principles in his art and life are most influenced by the timeless wisdom of Muhammad Ali and his notion that only through patience and compassion, comes extreme honesty. Likewise, while living in Oakland, CA during the COVID-19 lockdown, Kamal conected with the work of Jean Michel Basquiat, zeroing in one one particular quote of his: "Black people are never portrayed realistically - not even portrayed in modern art at all." This struck Kamal as validation of what he describes as a "lack of narrative nuance" for black people portrayed in art. His objective became to challenge oversimplified depictions of African Americans, and tell their individual stories - leaving the spectator with a clear understanding of not only what it means to be black, but what what it means to be human.