INTERVIEW WITH PHOTOGRAPHER EMERALD ARGUELLES

Antakly Projects

emeraldarguelles.com @emeraldarguelles

Antakly Projects  ·  Photography  ·  Savannah, Georgia

Emerald Arguelles

An Imagined Domestic Fantasy

Afro-Cuban photographer celebrating Blackness in all its beauty, power, and resilience. Former Marine turned visual artist. Editor-in-Chief of Ain't Bad, Savannah.

Savannah, Georgia Vogue Italia  ·  Washington Post Ain't Bad  ·  Editor-in-Chief

For Nakeya  ©  Emerald Arguelles

Leila chose to speak with Emerald Arguelles because her photographs feel like recovered memories: not the past as it was, but as it deserved to be. There is a softness and a power in them that are not in competition with each other.

By Leila Antakly

Emerald Arguelles is an Afro-Cuban photographer based in Savannah, Georgia, internationally recognised for her explorations and celebration of Blackness in all its beauty, power, and resilience. Her photography reconstructs her experiences of growing up surrounded by women, particularly in the South, who embodied confidence, grandeur, hustle, and extravagance.

Her work both reimagines the past and looks to the future for Black Americans, creating what she calls an imagined domestic fantasy through a combination of fashion editorial and fine art. It has been featured in Vogue Italia, BuzzFeed News, and The Washington Post, and exhibited in Rome, New York, and Georgia.

She is also Editor-in-Chief of Ain't Bad, a Savannah-based art publisher supporting a progressive and diverse community of artists, a role she took on after George Floyd was murdered in 2020, with the intention of creating a safe space for Black creators.

"Photography has become a way to heal. While photographs are tangible, the space we create and exist within a picture is priceless and intangible."

Emerald Arguelles

The conversation  ·  Interview by Leila Antakly

01

How did you arrive at your current photographic practice?

After I got out of the Marine Corps, I needed a sense of individualism and a sense of self. Being a photographer allowed me to reinvent myself and heal through the beauty of Blackness.

02

Tell us a bit about your creative process.

My creative process is very hectic. I move very carefully to ensure that everything is correct: location, makeup, clothing. Still, I have seen that a sense of freedom in my subjects breaks through and allows for looseness and comfortability. That is when the best images happen.

03

What are your inspirations and influences?

My inspirations and influences come from my experiences, environment, and community.

"I have been searching for a home, an identity, through my elders. At 26, I am just now having conversations with my Cuban grandfather about his upbringing, about his life working in a sugarcane field for five years in order to come to America, and asking my mother about her experiences growing up in Mississippi in the 1960s as a Black woman. After Hurricane Katrina, I learned that nothing is forever, and neither are people."

04

What draws you to the stories you tell through your work?

My absence of things influences my work. The ability to reimagine my life fuels the stories that I tell. As the daughter of working-class parents, I appreciate being driven by a passion for my work rather than a sense of necessity and responsibility. Being able to make an impact, while making myself and my family proud, is truly an accomplishment.

05

A lot of your work feels rooted in a sense of place. How important is this to you?

I believe moving from New Orleans to Ohio influences my work more than I realise. I lacked many things, but as an adult I can create the world I want.

06

What does wellbeing mean to you?

Wellbeing to me means doing what is best for me in the right way. I am not religious, but practising the fundamentals of being a good human being has always served me well.

The Black Aesthetic

Timeless
Past and Future
Fashion and Fine Art
Imagined
Domestic

The elements of the Black aesthetic Arguelles captures have always been a part of Black art. The way she embraces these enduring elements gives her work a timelessness that speaks to Black beauty not just of today, but of the past and the future. From the coil of Black hair to the glow of dark skin to the majesty of Afrofuturism, this timelessness is wrapped in the details of her work.

She creates what she calls an imagined domestic fantasy: an alternative archive, a counter-memory, a version of history in which Black women's grandeur, hustle, and extravagance are the centre of the frame rather than its margin.

Her photographs are not documentary and not fiction. They are something more precise: a rehearsal for a world that should have existed, and a record of its beauty that does exist, right now, when she makes it.

"I lacked many things, but as an adult I can create the world I want."

Emerald Arguelles

Stay curious,

Leila Antakly

Antakly Projects

Over 1,000 interviews across 23 years. An independent platform built on genuine curiosity, direct access, and conversations that go further.

Leila Antakly on Substack @antakly.projects on Instagram emeraldarguelles.com @emeraldarguelles on Instagram Ain't Bad

Leila Antakly  ·  Founder / Editor  ·  Photography by Emerald Arguelles

Blessed, Courtesy Emerald Arguelles

For Nakeya, Courtesy of Emeral Arguelles