Samer Ghani Photographs Milwaukee as it is Today

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Photo by Ryan Reeve

Samer Ghani

Samer Ghani is a photographer, videographer, producer and journalist who grew up here in Milwaukee. A first generation Palestinian-American, Ghani has built his career steadily over the last few years documenting our city’s communities and cultures. He firmly believes in the intersectionality between love, community, art and life, using his medium to uplift others in their own moments of joy and expression. He’s worked with Visit Milwaukee, Imagine MKE, Milwaukee Ballet, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Light the Hoan, Vivient Health, Jigsaw, Hason Dodge, Google Arts & Culture, and more as well as highlighted Milwaukee artists across a plethora of different venues. This year he became the recipient of the Dear MKE award presented to him by Visit Milwaukee.

Let’s start with some basics. Tell us about where your interest in photography sparked?

I feel like as long as I can remember, music and art have been such a big part of my life. I pursued music almost professionally when I was young, like I was part of an award-winning orchestra not only nationally but internationally, which was crazy to be a part of in 7th and 8th grade. When I was in high school, I pursued music more personally; I was also taking art history courses that I continued to take through university. I was no painter and definitely was no sculptor, and as much as I tried at fine art I just couldn’t quite do it—my brain and body don’t work that way. But I rented a camera from art class and I started documenting things in my life, and I realized that was the way I wanted to tell stories. It felt a lot like poetry, and very early on in my life I realized that the art of documentation is so important journalistically and politically. I thought it was very inspiring.

That’s beautiful, man. It’s a visceral form of storytelling. Where’d you go to high school?

Ronald Reagan in MPS.

How did you know you were taking photography seriously and ready to make it a livelihood?

I haven’t really been asked this question under these circumstances so this is a cool opportunity to tell this part of the story. At the end of 2018 I was still working at Apple, and this was two years into my hobby of photography, if you will—it was still a part-time thing. I went to the 88Nine Awards that year; I tagged along with Shle Berry and my buddies in Paper Holland were there, and we were all having a great time.

There were a ton of great shooters there that night; Mahdi Gransberry (FreakishNerd) was one of them, Lily Shea was another, and it was one of the first times I was in an environment where I wasn’t the only show shooter. We left that night and I felt very inspired from connecting with a lot of artists, and then the next morning I had to wake up and open the Apple store. I was checking Instagram on my first break at like 9:30 a.m., and all these shooters had already edited and sent out photos to these artists.

That’s when I realized the art of being timely—the art of having two feet in—because I wasn’t going to get my photos done till that night and send them out the next day, and at that point the magic of the show already expired. That was a big learning experience for me. Shortly after that I moved to another tech job, and I stayed there for just a handful of months before I quit and just dove full time into photography. I didn’t have a lot of money so it was a lot of cold calling and emailing businesses and restaurants trying to get them to hire me for photo work.

All the while I was still shooting shows for free and trying to get my name out there playing the social media game, and it inevitably paid off. But I’ll be honest with you, it was so miserable quitting my job and diving full time into this. I almost gave up a lot; sometimes I still almost feel like giving up but for different reasons. Back then I was going on tours with bands and losing money on the road trying to get experience.

I don’t recommend just quitting your job to follow your passion. Business 101 is saving up something or waiting for the right opportunity; sometimes you won’t be available for that opportunity if you have other stuff going on. The duality of it is not quitting your job too soon, but when you quit your job be ready for the worst of life. Man, it’ll all come at you so hard and so fast. Honestly, that’s the test—that first year of being a full-time artist.

You recently said in an Instagram post that your life has reached a tipping point of intersectionality of community, art, love and life. Can you share what you mean by that?

When I first started this journey, it was about if I could showcase the best Milwaukee has in the highest quality that I as a documenter and artist can produce. And along that journey, can I grow as an artist alongside these incredibly talented people.

In doing so I never really expected this to be how things shook out. I never expected myself to be a leader in any form. I never expected myself to be working with companies like Visit Milwaukee or the Bucks or Milwaukee County Parks or the Milwaukee Art Museum. I never expected myself to be doing that type of work; I just always thought I would be a shooter. I didn’t think that me being an artist of color or first generation American I ever mattered, and it was only until the summer of 2020 that I chose to really put all of the art and journey stuff aside and really embrace that part of who I was.

Last summer I realized that if this is what we’re protesting for now, maybe one day I’ll see a Palestinian flag flying through Milwaukee downtown. And exactly a year later we saw that. Being able to embrace that part of myself is where I land in that intersectionality of what it means to be an artist, a first generation American, a person of color, and to support your community. Realizing that my career is not the art—it’s actually me. It’s the things that I choose to stand for and talk about. That’s the part that makes me feel something, because sharing cool content is awesome, but sharing content that leaves an impact on somebody is definitely what I’m here for.

How do you feel your self-perception as a creative has evolved over time?

I like that question a lot too. When I first started back in late 2016, I was really strict about not showing my face on Instagram and Twitter. I thought that if you’re a good documenter, you know your place, and that’s behind the camera. Like, you’re really supposed to remove your personality from what you’re doing and that’s the idealistic form of all journalism, and I took that very seriously—to a fault. People didn’t even know what I looked like and I realized that was a problem, like I needed to be as approachable as I wanted my work to be.

That was probably one of the bigger things that changed over time—showing my face with a little more pride. That started this whole journey of self-love. When I started documenting myself, I hated the way that I looked and how uncomfortable I was with my fashion, and how a lot of the way that I dressed was to hide myself in a lot of ways, like I would just wear dark tones because it blended with my skin color and I didn’t want to outwardly show that I love the color pink.

I didn’t want to embrace that part of myself publicly. But now I wear platform Converse and I just bought a pink shirt today.

Bringing things to the present here, what’s been going in Palestine this year has been heartbreaking to see. You started touching on the exact thing I was going to ask. How did it make you feel to see Milwaukee show up in solidarity for Palestine earlier this year?

It was crazy. I was on a subway in New York City when the first rally happened in downtown Milwaukee, and I watched WebsterX’s Instagram story of him chanting and marching in solidarity for Palestine. I looked over at my buddy Joe Tomcheck and I was like “dude, this is actually happening!” and we talked about it all night. It shook my world, like I didn’t expect to see that, come home to that, or participate in that. I even saw family members I hardly talk to or don’t talk to all at these gatherings, which was inspiring to say the least.

It changed everything for me. It pushed my career into a different trajectory forever, unexpectedly. I think it changed the way people saw me. Out of that whole experience of me deducing these thoughts and what they mean to me, I created opportunities which I thought were cool starting with the garage mural.

Not only was it an opportunity for the artist Reid Finley, which was an amazing collaboration, but it was an opportunity for my neighborhood to see a new version of art, and to see that this is a family who cares about where they come from. It made me feel seen for the first time where I could let all the walls down. I’m not just the dude who shot your show or did this or did that. This is all of me.

That’s real. What’s a goal you have by the end of the year?

I’ll be very honest with you; a lot of my opportunities kind of sneak up on me at the last minute, and it’s really hard to plan for the near future. But I would like to do one of a few things before the end of this year. I want to travel, which I think is highly likely. I want to put out one more personal video that tells a little more of my story. I want to create a series of 15 to 30 second Instagram/TikTok reels, but I want them to be incredibly cinematic and tell a story in those seconds. That’s a technical and artistic challenge I look forward to tackling.

And then the last thing I want to do by the end of the year - and this one’s a very personal one—I have some loose ends I’d like to tie up. I don’t want to keep going down this path knowing that I hurt someone, whether it was intentional or not intentional. I think that’s a different form of giving back, is being able to tell someone what they actually mean to you, and how I personally may have misinterpreted something or left something unsaid which led to a negative air. I would like to clear up some of that.

Those are all fantastic goals, both personally and professionally. I empathize with the place where that last goal comes from because it has been such a mortal time we’re living in. I hope a lot of people feel that way too.

Please visit Samer Ghani’s website at コメット (samerghani.com).