Black Image Center has become a vital resource for many Black photographers living in Los Angeles. Here, one such photographer, Giselle Keena, premieres her latest project
“I have very wild, vivid dreams,” Giselle Keena tells me as we discuss her short film Cake. Keena first envisioned the film while on a plane from Los Angeles to New York. She started sketching a few images and suddenly the central shot of the film – a person looking down at a talking birthday cake – emerged.
“I first thought of Troye Sivan,” says Keena, which surprises me. She tells me she’s always loved the look of bleached hair; Cake’s protagonist – played by Ajani Russell – wears bleach-blonde braids, with bleached eyebrows to match.
Cake, its title befitting, is a visual treat that offers a glimpse into Keena’s vibrant imagination. Filled with primary reds, yellows and blues, Cake’s playful and buoyant tone recalls the work of filmmaker Agnès Varda. “I wanted it to feel really juicy,” Keena explains, a description that immediately resonates. Cake’s palette has the lively appeal of sweets packaging.
The film’s classroom setting reflects Keena’s fond memories of the small Catholic school she attended as a child. “Every day, that was my world,” she explains. “This one block in this small Michigan town. The Catholic church that we had is still the most beautiful church I’ve ever been to in my entire life. It’s where my mom’s funeral was, the first I ever went to.” Keena’s sixth grade class, along with the school’s fifth, sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, her mother’s favourite film.
Keena’s relationship with her mother continues to be a powerful source in her life. “She and I have conversations in my dreams,” says Keena. “Now that I’m getting older, I’m trying to honour her as much as possible. She’d be really excited about what I’m doing. She got me a camera when I was ten. She printed out all the photos that she took of me, from the day I was born until I was ten, and put them all in an album.”
Keena now works professionally as a photographer and has collaborated with notable brands such as Crown Affair, Youth to the People and Chanel’s @WeLoveCoco. She started her career in New York – where she attended acting school for a year – but now lives in Hollywood, the city she and her mother always dreamed of living in.
“I feel as though I’m being asked, “What's your deepest desire? What do you want?,” Keena tells me. “[Cake] is my journal entry: We have everything we need, tenfold. And if you just trust what you can’t see, you’re good.”
Black Image Center in Los Angeles, where I speak with Keena about Cake, has been a vital resource for her and many other talented Black photographers living in the city. The Center, a collective-based nonprofit aimed at empowering local Black image-makers, connected Keena to Youth to the People.
Photographers Maya June Mansour, Kalena Yiaueki, Samone Kidane, Michael Tyrone Delaney, Zamar Velez, and Haleigh Nickerson founded the Center in 2020. Two Los Angeles institutions served as important models: Las Fotos Project in East Los Angeles and The Underground Museum – which closed its doors in 2022 – in Arlington Heights. The Center offers an extensive range of resources and events, including residencies, film screenings, workshops and a fully-stocked free film refrigerator. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the Center hosts open work days for a small fee.
“In a perfect world, Black Image Center would be obsolete ... Black people would be equipped and empowered to share our own stories through our own lens without having to navigate stereotypes or misrepresentation!” – Maya June Mansour
“In a perfect world, Black Image Center would be obsolete,” says co-founder Maya June Mansour over email. “There would be no racial bias in the creative and entertainment industries. Black people would be equipped and empowered to share our own stories through our own lens without having to navigate stereotypes or misrepresentation! In the meantime, we hope to become fully funded so that we can bring on full time staff to run the space. We want to have a darkroom, equipment rentals, and even more programming.”
On Thursday, the Center will host a screening of Cake. For Keena, it will certainly be the first of many. She has already finished editing another short short and has a third and fourth written and planned. “I’m planning to have only Black leads,” she adds. A feature is in the works too, about a group of twenty-somethings who “get intertwined in each other’s secrets and romances.” It has a darker edge and is partly inspired by Keena’s love of the film Place Beyond the Pines (2012).
“I feel like if I keep making them everything will just make more sense,” Keena says. “Our human bodies are broken by what breaks us, but it’s not about that to me. In my own experience, I’ve been really close with what feels like the universe. Making [Cake] felt like connecting to that.”
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