Naturally, Kornegay’s dream to tell black gay men’s stories matched the Counter Narrative Project’s mission almost exactly. “Portrait of Daniel” from Johnnie Ray Kornegay III’s “NAKED” series. The project hired Kornegay, now director of mobilization, the following year as a consultant in charge of capturing video and images, where necessary, and stakeholder engagement. Late in 2014, Kornegay happened upon Charles Stephens and the Atlanta nonprofit Counter Narrative Project, which uses art as a movement building tool in the work it was doing. RELATED: Personal stories help counter negative images of black gay men “For the first time in my life, I felt lost,” he said. With no plan and no job to fund his dream, he was evicted from his apartment and his car was repossessed.
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In June 2015, Kornegay quit his job at Home Depot to follow his dream full time but quickly lost his footing. Clients included Curron Gajadhar, a local painter, the Brown Dance Project, writer Marcus Emel, and hit songwriter Kipper Jones, whom Kornegay still manages today. Kornegay, under the pseudonym Jay Ray, was making a name for himself, and soon after, other artists began seeking him out for consulting and management gigs. His first break came when his Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity brother, who was launching a jewelry line, asked him to photograph his models.
Months later, Kornegay founded Staticc Art and Life to "deliver beauty to the world," he said. Kornegay hesitated at first but then went out and purchased a Nikon D3200 and in between interviewing people and working at Home Depot, started taking photographs. When he mentioned to an ex-boyfriend that he wanted to interview house music DJs about their craft, his friend suggested he also buy a camera, so he could have a video record of the conversations. RELATED: The silent epidemic: Black gay men and HIV The response was so positive, Kornegay decided to start a Facebook fan page. “Portrait of Aryn” by Johnnie Ray Kornegay III.Įvery Tuesday from then on, he began posting art- and music-related missives on Facebook. In 2011, Kornegay said that he ended up one night on Edgewood Avenue, where he discovered an artist, Eric Nine, exhibiting his work “I’m a Beast.” Kornegay, if you haven’t guessed already, is also a black gay man, a revelation he hadn’t publicly proclaimed until in 2015 after he found himself adding his name to an online letter expressing love and devotion to Michael Johnson, a black gay man sentenced to prison for “knowingly” exposing or transmitting HIV to six male partners.
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I could see that in the way his eyes lit up as he talked about “Be the Flame” and his newest body of work, “NAKED,” a photo series of 25 black gay and bisexual men in the nude, about body image and self-love and about what had evolved into his third dream: telling the stories of black gay men. Life with Gracie runs online Tuesday, Thursday and alternating Fridays.
I say that because, three days before World AIDS Day, I was with Kornegay in his Stone Mountain photography studio and it was very clear to me the man had discovered his true passion, which comes, of course, with accepting your true self.Įach week, Gracie Bonds Staples will bring you a perspective on life in the Atlanta area. It lasted four years and then in 2000, he walked out of that dream and, after graduating from Temple University, into a second, eventually rising to recruiter for Independence Blue Cross, which eventually led to a managerial position with Borders bookstore and then Home Depot here in Atlanta and closer, not just to his third dream, but what seems to have been his destiny. RELATED: Who do you think is the good Samaritan in this tale? This, he said, was an abbreviated version of that. Kornegay, of course, accepted.įor as long as he can remember, Kornegay wanted to be a music producer/performer. Kornegay returned that evening and several evenings after that, and six months later, the studio owner offered him a job as a technician. What happened next gives new meaning to what it means to follow your dream. If you're not doing anything later on, we're having a gospel music recording session. The man said yes and proceeded to lead Kornegay through the studio.