Photographing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Forty-eight hours ago, photographer Lelanie Foster didn’t know she would be photographing one of the most important figures of our time: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
When Jackson, on Thursday, was confirmed as the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Supreme Court, Foster got the call to gather her equipment and make her way to the White House. There, in the same building that houses Vice President Kamala Harris’s office—another woman of color who has broken barriers in politics—Foster took the stunning, raw portrait of Jackson that has caused waves of emotion since it was released Friday afternoon.
The photo is of Jackson wearing a black skirt suit, a string of pearls, and her glasses, looking proud and radiant in front of a plain grey backdrop inside the ornate, almost regal Indian Treaty room in the president’s home.
It conveys strength, perseverance, hard work, immense courage, and true beauty: everything Jackson represents and everything Foster wanted to communicate. "It was about the emotion that could be evoked in the image. I wanted to have her joyfulness but also her strength come across in the photograph," Foster tells me.
The White House doesn’t often do such personal portraits, but the occasion of Jackson’s confirmation called for that, and a lot more. "Just me, as a Black woman, being entrusted to create this imagery, was a huge privilege and honor," Foster says.
Foster has photographed a long list of notable figures—supermodel Emily Ratajkowski and the Queen & Slim cast, to name a few—but photographing Jackson felt very different, not only because of how attached she felt to her subject, but because she had only a few hours to prepare and create a scene that would, inevitably, make history.
"I gathered equipment last minute, drove all night (from New York City to Washington, D.C.) in the rain, and I couldn’t, like, scout the White House," she says with a laugh. "But we made it happen. Strong team."
Foster says her initial reaction to having gotten the project was that of disbelief, then "immense honor and gratitude and overwhelmed with feelings—because it’s emotional, you know?" And then, like a true photographer, she says she went straight to strategizing, "Like, alright, how do we in a day, essentially, bring together an amazing portrait of someone who I think has impacted all of us?"
The photographer had just wrapped up a project with The New York Times, where she photographed 22 Black women at Harvard Law School who are part of the Students Association, and who spoke to the interviewer about what Jackson’s confirmation means to them. The Ivy is Jackson’s alma mater, and she was part of the association when she was a student there. Plus, one of the women Foster photographed is the daughter of Jackson’s former Harvard roommate.
Foster, who describes Jackson as "absolutely wonderful" and "such a warm person," says the first thing the judge did when they met at the White House was tell her how much she loved the NYT piece and admires her work. "So, it was a full-circle, very special moment that felt very right at the time," Foster says.
Once the shoot began, Foster says she put on some music and started snapping away. Jackson’s husband, Patrick G. Jackson, and two daughters, Talia and Leila, were there for support, and Foster says that when the photos began coming up on the monitor, the family’s reactions and Jackson's sweet happy dances made her realize just how lucky she was to be part of such a special, private moment.
"They were saying like, 'Mom, do this,' or, 'Mom, you look good like that,' and her husband just so like, 'Oh, she’s so beautiful,' and cheering and kind of crying. Just seeing that was like, 'Wow, if there’s anywhere where I want to be a fly on the wall right now, it’s right here.' To see that side to her, and the love in the family, was something really special and priceless," Foster says, her voice breaking. "I will just hold the moment forever."
In a speech at the White House following her confirmation, Jackson said she has "spent years toiling away in the relative solitude of my chambers," so it has been "overwhelming, in a good way, to recently be flooded with thousands of notes and cards and photos expressing just how much this moment means to so many people."
"It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. But we’ve made it. We’ve made it, all of us. All of us. And—and our children are telling me that they see now, more than ever, that, here in America, anything is possible," Jackson said.
Still filled with emotion over the shoot, Foster tells me she knew Jackson would be confirmed to the Supreme Court once she was nominated by President Joe Biden and acted with absolute decency during the almost aggressive hearings. "I was like, 'She’s got it.' I felt confident that it was going to happen," Foster says, but as a person of color and a woman, it still felt incredibly meaningful to "see it all come to fruition."
Like the rest of us, Foster can’t stop thinking about what a huge step this is for Black people, people of color, and women everywhere, but now that she has gotten to know Jackson, she says she’s simply grateful she was able to see the real person behind the historic achievement.
"I loved the image and it was wonderful to be able to create it, but honestly what will stick with me forever is the experience that I shared with her, and her with open arms embracing me and allowing me to be in such an intimate space with her," Foster says.
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