The Listening Lens: Seed Lynn’s Participatory Photography

The Listening Lens: Seed Lynn’s Participatory Photography Seed Lynn is an emerging Chicago photographer who has developed a unique participatory technique allowing him to capture intense emotions expressed by participants in performative forms of Black culture. I initially researched Lynn’s archive of photographs capturing the emotions and movements of a unique Sunday Service that uses House Music developed by DJ Duane Powell. Subsequently, I studied Lynn’s photographs sensitively capturing the movements and aesthetics of Black roller-skating culture. Moving with House Music During his Sunday services using House Music developed over a decade at Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation, DJ Duane Powell has choreographed what we can consider four progressively intensive movements through his track selection from a repertoire of religiously relevant songs. These include moments of establishing individual presence at the service, growing congregation participation through dancing that leads to resounding resonance in repeated refrains, to the ultimate joy of release expressed in dancers’ body movements. Through his unique participatory technique of photography, Seed Lynn sensitively captures the progression of these movements. As a regular attendee of the Sunday Services, Seed photographs while dancing within the congregation, capturing emotionally charged moments of individual experiences through what he calls his “listening lens.” The Heavenly Body In his most recent work on Black culture, Seed Lynn has turned to roller skating generates a social space that promotes Black leisure and joy. In the project he again uses his participatory method, learning skating so that he can photograph while moving with his skater subjects.