The Brave Space

Camera Ready Kutz is a Brooklyn barbershop "geared towards, but not exclusive to, the LGBTQIA community". Outside is a black-and-white mural in the background of Stephanie Keith's photograph from yesterday's demonstration; the foreground is a woman in a mask made out of an American flag. The red-white-and-blue stands out in this black-white-and-brown scene: the black-and-white mural; her brown skin with the sun on her forehead; the brown skin of the man in black behind her, his white mask under his chin. This is the "brave space" of the barbershop, of the demonstration, of this American woman, brown in a land that makes her black, but claiming the red-white-and-blue as her own. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 June)