Turner reached out to his friend and colleague Olushola “Shola” Bashorun, a photographer who understood style and how his friend wanted to use it. Bashorun works as a sales specialist at an Hermes of Paris boutique in New York City. “I exercise my creative side with photography. I have a strong love for the art behind picture taking. There’s something special about capturing a subject’s emotions and creating memoirs that take half a second to evoke but last a lifetime. Photography is a mode of communication for me.”
Turner reached out to a few other friends and colleagues to help him with his artistic activism, including Brandon Bryant who ran a startup suit shop when he was a student at Ohio State University. The shop was called Pursuit and Bryant focused on putting young professionals in their first suit. Now an investment banker in New York City, Bryant runs a menswear blog called Wallstreet-paper.com that has been featured in many notable news outlets, including GQ, Complex, and Fader.
A photo shoot took place in New York City’s financial district and went viral after being shared on Blavity.com. It received more than 100,000 shares from Blavity and more than 6,000 on Facebook.
Turner is currently in the planning stages of Part 2 of the men’s installment and has plans to create an uplifting, visual project that features women. He’d also like to produce a gentleman’s forum and plan a community service initiative.
Turner is pleased at the support and feedback his visual activism has received. “I’m excited about continuing to use a simple idea to celebrate black life and its many layers.” And we are excited to see what he creates next.