Now in its third year, the Creative Exchange Fund, administered by The Medium in downtown Springdale, supports local artists by providing financial support and a space to take creative risks. KUAF is partnering with The Medium to profile some of this year’s 37 multidisciplinary artists. We’ll hear about their art, their process, and what it means to be a creative in northwest Arkansas right now.
Brett Pitts is a photographer raised in Fayetteville. After spending his childhood in northwest Arkansas, he proceeded to live several other places, including Alaska, before making this region his now permanent home.
Through the years, Pitts says he self-taught and developed his skills in photography, and the focus of his lens shifted from taking photos as he went, to landscapes, to eventually capturing mutual aid work for the unhoused community in Fayetteville. Pitt says this work was especially meaningful for him.
Brett Pitts: It’s really nice sometimes to slow down, grow roots, plant seeds and get involved.
And growing up in Fayetteville, I had moved 16 times by the time I left public school. And I was somebody who experienced housing insecurity. I’ve lived in everything from a tent to a two-story home that ended up being foreclosed on. But it’s definitely a part of my life and my story, housing. And so it’s definitely brought me to work with people in the community who don’t have access to shelter.
I’ve always been a really artistic person, but I have really bad executive functioning skills. I’m also really bad at handwriting and drawing. And so growing up, the types of art that were around me, I couldn’t really do very well.
And when I found photography, it was really incredible. Photography was much more about where you position your body and what environment you’re in. It just allows someone who maybe doesn’t have the fine motor skills to do other art to be able to participate in art. And so I think that came to me at the end of high school. And as soon as I had a camera in my hand, I essentially have had it with me ever since. I’m always taking photos of everything. And I don’t really have any education with photography. It’s all been self-taught and comes from just taking photos as I go.
It was really incredible. Alaska was right before I moved back, and we spent a few years there. And it was wonderful because at the time, I had thought that that’s what I wanted to be photographing—landscapes and wildlife. And being in one of the most beautiful places in the world was really inspiring. But as the years passed there, there was a really giant void. And it was really weird to be in the place that I thought I wanted to be, to take incredible photos, and realize that what I wanted to be taking photos of didn’t exist around me.
And it took me a couple of years to really understand what was happening internally for me as an artist, of like, what am I missing? And as I moved back to Fayetteville, I realized that what I want to be taking photos of and what was missing in Alaska was community.
And since I’ve been back, the type of work I do has absolutely changed. It’s shifted dramatically. Probably at this point, 90% of the work I do is not for pay—donating photos to organizing groups and mutual aid organizations. And this project is taking a lot of time. And I still do some weddings and events and stuff like that. It’s a lot of fun and I cherish those opportunities as well. But I’ve kind of, I think I’ve found what I’m supposed to be doing with a camera. And it’s absolutely connected to being here at home and working with the community.
I have never applied for a grant. I honestly had to look up what exactly a grant was. And I was looking it up and I was like, OK, this is kind of cool. But by the time I applied, I only had a few days before the deadline. And so I just spent a few days putting together this project.
It was in my heart. I had been feeling pulled to doing this work for years at this point. And it was an incredible opportunity to apply for The Medium and this residency, because it allowed me to structure all of my thoughts and ideas, that internal compass I had, and really put it together and really visualize for myself what I actually was trying to do.
And the application process itself was honestly just a really wonderful opportunity. And so it ended up working out and I got selected for the residency.
The project I’m going to be working on now is called “Home,” and it’s just kind of examining what home is. It’s work that I’m doing with our unhoused neighbors here in Fayetteville, primarily focused around South Fayetteville.
For the project, I’m kind of really leaning into film photography for the first time. I’ve dabbled a little bit, but it’s really my first time. It’s honestly my first project I’ve ever done, but it’s also my first time really relying on film photography. So I’m going to get to learn how to scan negatives and develop film and make prints and do all of that fun stuff.
I draw inspiration from kind of older photojournalistic film, black-and-white film photography. There’s something about it that I really like. So that’s kind of what this project is. It’s candid, photojournalistic black-and-white film and very grainy and imperfect. It’s really intended to be as real and gritty as possible.
When you’re shooting with film, it’s quite meditative. It’s very in the moment. It’s a medium of photography that really pulls you into being intentional. And being in that soft, intentional, meditative space is also something that’s really helpful whenever you’re interacting with people who are in situations that are really difficult. I’ve found that me being around with a film camera has kind of helped me move into spaces where it’s much less about the photography and much less about the camera. The film camera kind of just gets to become this thing that’s present.
And if people give consent or show excitement toward it and want to participate in this project, then I can bring it out and we can take photos. It really kind of becomes a minor actor in the actual experience of working with people and photographing people. Whereas with my digital camera, it kind of just has a weight to it. It really seems, I think, more scary to some people. It also just requires taking a lot more photos and you’re not quite present. It’s incredible how just two different mediums within photography can pull you to two completely different mindsets…
I actually would want to start with this photo.
So this woman—photographically, what we’re looking at—it’s not a great photograph. It’s probably technically one of my least good photographs that I’ve scanned so far. It’s quite grainy. There’s not an interesting background. But it’s just a simple portrait of a woman in a neck brace sitting in City Hall downstairs after she spoke in front of the mayor and the City Council.
This is one of the most powerful people that I know. This was during the City Council meeting where a safe camp had been proposed. And numerous of our unhoused friends came up and voiced their support for the safe camp. She had a stroke just before she spoke. She had a stroke downstairs in City Hall. And the ambulance came and they helped get her in a good spot, gave her the neck brace. And the first thing she said after she had a stroke was that she didn’t want to leave and that she wanted to speak.
She went up and she was the first person to speak in favor of asking the city to find a solution for so many people that were being displaced at the time. And so this photo afterward, she’s so confident and she’s so proud and strong. It’s just, I don’t know, maybe an example of how a photo, technically nothing important in this photo, but her soul comes through. The emotions come through. The power that this woman has. The worst photo in the world, that power would still come through…
I have to choose wisely, because a lot of these bring up emotions. It's sometimes hard to go through some of these photographs without crying or going into an emotional state. Which is not a bad thing, crying is not bad. It's beautiful.
This photograph is my favorite that I’ve seen that I’ve taken. This is a person who—we had a really beautiful conversation. I came to them and they were drawing. They were doing fantastic art on the side of a little sign for local businesses. And we just got to chatting and we shared life stories. They had similar experiences that I’ve had in my life of growing up kind of under patriarchy and being conditioned as someone who was assigned male at birth, but later in life found that that gender identity didn’t fit with them.
So they, although assigned male at birth, they’re someone who everyone calls camp mom. They have a really beautiful and nurturing relationship with the camps that they’re around. They’re also someone who is really interested in figuring out ways that they could get involved in changing the city and making things easier for people who are experiencing homelessness.
That brings up something that I think is really important to talk about, which is that there are so many intersections that are happening in our unhoused community. There are trans folks who are unhoused. There are BIPOC folks. There are queer folks. We have immigrant unhoused neighbors, and people who have disabilities. And if you care about something in the world, it exists with our unhoused neighbors. And sometimes they bear the worst of it when you don’t have a home.
There was a community member who saw somebody being taken by ICE in Walker Park, an immigrant neighbor. And when you don’t have a shelter or even a door that you can tell someone to leave, you are kind of just at the whim of the environment around you.
In this photo, this person is looking up toward the sky. They spoke a lot about addiction. And in this photo, they’re leaning on a sign that is a liquor store sign. There is sort of this heavy weight that comes from this sign that they’re leaning up against. This liquor store is a truth to their life and a deep, deep part of their struggle. But to be able to lean against that and to be able to make beautiful art and look at the sky—it was just a wonderful conversation. For me, it’s my favorite photo. There’s just something queer and beautiful and hopeful about this photo that I really appreciate.
My relationship with photography used to be outside of myself. Photography was important because of who would look at it. Now photography, at least the photography I’m engaging in right now, means so much more. Looking at this photograph, it’s not about, does it get shared? Who looks at it? Do I feel validated as a photographer? It’s about the stories and the people and the emotions and what the photograph does.
I used to live in a world where the photograph really the only thing it could do was either make a client happy or make a few dollars by selling a print, or just be shared and liked by friends. And that's cool. But these photographs I’m taking now mean so much more to me because they have the opportunity to bring in money, maybe get some donations and give somebody a warm meal.
They have the opportunity to maybe get people connected to resources and ways that they can get involved that are life-changing. Not just for the people that you are participating in care with, but for yourself, because a lot of people find that when they get involved in community work, that they find friends and family and so many wholesome, incredible things.
So when I’m looking at this photo, I see my friends. I see the pain. I see issues with the city. I see so many things. I probably don't know how to describe it, but photography for me now is so much more about what and who maybe it connects and why.
Brett Pitts’ photography work will be on display at The Medium in Springdale during a free reception on March 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. You can find more of Brett’s work on his Instagram.
The Creative Exchange series is produced by KUAF Public Radio in partnership with The Medium. Support for this project comes from the Tyson Family Foundation. The Medium and the Creative Exchange Fund are projects of the Creative Arkansas Community Hub Exchange, or CACHE. More information can be found here.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
