Meet Milton Pitts

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Milton Pitts a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Milton, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Growing up in detroit honestly. Being 34 you look back at your childhood and realize you had to be resilient to survive.

I grew up off Fenkell and Livernoise and I went through a lot of hard times. Dealt with the wrong people at times. You start to learn how to move around the noise you know. How to stand up for yourself, how to stand talk in whatever you do, and how it feels when you overcome that adversity holding you back.

The choices you make you gotta carry the weight of them. Thats a lesson I hold in my artwork. Thats why its speaks to not giving up. You gotta be resilient when you create anything, because you will have moments that you feel everything you are doing isn’t worth it. You gotta fall back on what made you do it to succeed in this world.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Im Milton Pitts. I am a Photographer who started out doing street photography as a way of just finding peace in my life. Over the past year it has evolved into…..shall I say street fine arts photography.

My work consists of speaking about 3 main topics; black spirituality, Detroit culture, and self healing and vulnerability for black men.

It’s like a weird obsession honestly. The thing I love about photography is that I get to bring the best moments that we as humans can ignore because they are just a small moment in the grand scheme of things. I get to highlight so many cool individuals I’ve met that inspires me to keep taking more photos over and over every single day.

And it’s working out. It’s my first year I’ve been able to be in 5 different shows in my first year. All I want at this point is to be a voice for the voiceless and for those afraid to speak on their emotions

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

So I’ll work backwards as I’m still a person on a journey. So from least impact to most impactful (they all impactful):

1. Eye over Equipment . All of my photos are from the very mid Sony base kit lens. I promise you unless you are a photographer you couldn’t tell the difference at times. Your eye controls the photo, equipment is how you capture it. Learn to trust your eyes and your art will show no matter how basic your equipment is.

2. Find support. Family don’t always come through. Find people who support you and build a team you can talk to. I have people in my corner I can call for advice on art at any time. But that took me a year of breaking my shell and saying I need help, I want to be better. An artist is only as strong as the team they keeps around them.

3. Don’t chase accolades. This is the most important thing. There are goals I want. I want to be a Kresge Award winner. I want to go to Art Basil and be seen. But the biggest goal I want over both of those, is to tell my story of a black man from Detroit. That’s over any and everything. The awards come with the love of the game. But if you forget that and chase it, your work will fail. So remember why you went on your journey and do it for that reason. Like that’s the best lesson I can tell anyone. Do it for what made you fall in love with it

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

My communication with people. As a photographer it is important do network. Be it you want a model, looking for a gig, or looking for call for artist.

I had a major problem just talking to people. My past prevented me from doing it. But I’ve met people in the Detroit art scene who pushes me so much to show up and be me. Speak up, reach out to collab, speak on my process.

I wouldn’t have improved if I stayed in my shell. You got to get out and see the world and people as they are. It opens the doors the shots you never thought you could get. One of my favorite photos came from me talking to a random person at my last Show. So that’s what I think has improved the most.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @millz_49roses
• Facebook: Milton Pitts