Climax Books Steven Cuffie: Women

Made in the 1970s, Steven Cuffie’s seminal Women series features probing portraits of Black women in Baltimore, the city where the American photographer lived and worked. For the majority of his life, Cuffie also worked as a photographer for the City of Baltimore, capturing city events, crime scenes, water main breaks – mundane things for public record.

Outside of his day job however, Cuffie worked on Women in his basement darkroom – a series that deals with the relations between men and women, voyeurism, and personhood. “[This series is] about a man who’s coming to understand his relationship with women: what it’s like to be a woman, and what it’s like to be a Black woman,” said the photographer’s youngest child Marcus Cuffie. “He had a ‘Black is beautiful’ mindset. He wanted to give us that understanding, so I was always very aware that I was Black, and of what being Black in America meant, that it was something to be enjoyed, supported, and loved.”