Always Looking: Titus Brooks Heagins

ALWAYS LOOKING: TITUS BROOKS HEAGINS explores the work of photographer Titus Brooks Heagins and the challenging questions his photos pose about the systemic and casual exclusions and neglect of society’s most vulnerable communities of color. Humanizing, reverent, and confrontational, Titus’ photographs document the overlooked: people who – usually through some intersection of poverty, race, or gender/sexual identity – exist as outsiders. He describes his work as “confronting viewers in their personal spaces to move the position of ‘otherness’ closer to a normative construction of self.” A large body of Titus’ work focuses on trans people, whom he has photographed in the U.S. and Cuba since 2016. As a cis-gendered African American man in his 70s, Titus’ relationship with these communities is complex and controversial, a topic the film examines as he draws a connection to his experiences of being bullied, and othered, as a child. Through verite footage following Titus into the field, plus interviews with family, colleagues, and mentees, ALWAYS LOOKING: TITUS BROOKS HEAGINS examines a complex, talented, passionate, and compassionate figure. It also illuminates the fortitude it takes to be an outsider documenting other marginalized people.