See What I See
By Doug Schnitzspahn
Lanisha Renee Blount did not plan on becoming a photographer. She studied architecture and design in grad school at Harvard and bought a camera before a trip to Japan in 2016. Immersed in another culture for months, she turned to shooting images of people, landscapes, and urban scenes in black-and-white and color. Back home, she began to photograph her climbing trips—to Joshua Tree with her brother and beyond on jaunts to the crags and camping with friends that were carefree and full of laughter.
That joy has become what she seeks in all people from behind her lens, especially in people of color, who are still frustratingly underrepresented in outdoor imagery.
“I think the outdoor industry is so much about summit culture, about how hard things are, how people are suffering. That resonates with some people, but when you are trying to make the outdoors more inclusive and appeal to a broader audience who may not have felt welcome prior, it doesn’t work,” says Blount, who recently moved from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, and works as a consultant when she’s not shooting.
“For Black people especially, the outdoors has not felt welcoming. What I am going for is to make the outdoors look like a warm, fun thing to do, to make it accessible.”
Blount, whose clients include Arc’teryx, The North Face, and Patagonia, shot these photos on spec during a trip with climbers from Brooklyn to a secret crag in Connecticut in February 2019 and on a road trip from Oakland to Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows last October. The idea was simply to document the carefree spirit of getting out.
“I think being joyful is an act of resistance. It’s reclaiming a space that may not be meant for you. That’s important. Just being outdoors can be the win, not the summit.” You can see more of Blount’s work at lrblount.com and follow her on Instagram @urbanclimbr.