♪ Hey, everybody, I'm Felicia Curry, and welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around DC.

In this episode, we celebrate the end of our season with the best of the best, reprising 3 stories that won Emmy Awards.

First, aspiring costume designers compete at Awesome Con.

Next, a street photographer goes to Georgia Avenue to search for the perfect shot, and we dig deep into the history of the Lincoln Memorial.

It's all ahead on "WETA Arts."

♪ The Washington Convention Center hosts all kinds of gatherings but few as colorful as Awesome Con.

It's a festival that attracts over 70,000 fans to celebrate every conceivable genre and subgenre of pop culture.

Shady Haze from Northern Virginia is an Awesome Con celebrity guest who attends conventions around the country.

There was, like, tens and thousands of Facebook groups in the DMV with different niches.

So there's DC Comics, there's "Star Wars."

Maybe there is for, like, LGBTQ geeks.

Curry: One niche represented at the convention is cosplay, combining costume and play to inhabit a character from a work of fiction.

Roquois Clarke is a fan of anime, a popular genre of Japanese animation.

Roquois Clarke: "Sailor Moon" is one of my favorite anime, and it just literally shaped a lot of who I am, and so when I cosplay Sailor Moon, I become Sailor Moon.

I am running around, trying to make everyone feel good, and just bring a lot of that "Moon" magic.

Curry: Among the events at Awesome Con is the cosplay competition for people who make their costumes by hand.

Candace Birger, known as Plexi Cosplay, is one of three judges at this competition.

She's a veteran of the cosplay scene, having won major cosplay competitions, like Baltimore Comic-Con, New York Comic Con, and TwitchCon in Amsterdam.

People come to compete because they put a lot of time and effort and probably money and sweat and tears and probably some blood into these costumes.

And so they don't want you to just take a glance at it and say, "Go prance on stage for me."

They want you to pick apart their costume.

Cosplayer: Yes, I can.

And they go over my glasses.

Birger: Oh, they go over your glasses!

Birger, voice-over: For me, as a craftsmanship person, someone who's really focused on making really cool stuff, I want to see, did you spend the time to do it right?

Did you really take time to develop your skills and give us the best that you've got?

Curry: Cosplay competition judge Black Crystal Cosplay has been in the scene since high school.

I graduated high school in 2013, and in 2012, they had a Spirit Week.

So I said, I'll just dress up as Korra from "Legend of Korra," because she was my favorite character at the time, and I love super strong femme protagonists.

And so when I wore it to school, everybody was like, "I love your cosplay."

I really was like, "What the heck is a cosplay?"

I didn't go to my first convention until 2014.

That convention, I believe, was Katsucon at the National Harbor.

That was when I really started.

Like, 2014, I was like, "I gotta do it, I gotta do it!"

Birger: With your goggles on... Curry: Candace Birger first got into cosplay in 2016 and quickly got involved with high-level competitions.

I didn't really know what cosplay was, and I really discovered that I felt more comfortable in a costume and I felt like I belonged somewhere.

I enjoy the craftsmanship.

I enjoy the ambition, building new things, meeting new people, and networking, and I've made it a big part of my life.

Once you start competing in really high-level competitions, it's time to give back.

So, this is my way of giving back to the community with really good, experienced judging and in a way that I know that I would want to be judged.

I would want to be judged by somebody who really looks at the details.

I want to be judged by somebody who's positive, optimistic, accepting.

[Cheering and applause] Hi.

Curry: Brionna Walker is competing as Belle, the title character from an anime released in 2021.

She's hoping to repeat her first-place win at the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival in Washington, DC, which took place near the Capitol on the last two days of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Brionna Walker: I sewed these patches on and then did all the gems, and I bought the corset for the outline, but then I jeweled all of it all around, and then I jeweled the sleeves.

And I also jeweled my crown.

The crunch time was about 80 hours with five hours of sleep.

Black Crystal Cosplay: The contest, they have different tiers of it.

So they have, like, the beginners.

Sometimes they have the juniors for the kids.

Sometimes they'll have, like, the super-super advanced ones, where people all over the world will come out and showcase these huge props and, like, LED lights and, like, the smoke machines and everything.

[Announcer speaking indistinctly] If you don't look like what a character would look like in the comic, you can still dress as that character because we're judging your costume.

We're not judging the way you fit into it.

We're judging the craftsmanship of what you brought to the table.

I loved making my Halloween costumes, loved it, but always felt Halloween's not enough.

It's something about cosplay that I really feel that none of my problems are here right now.

♪ Curry: Clarke founded Plus Ultra Entertainment to increase attendance by cosplayers who are Black or people of color.

Clarke: What I realized about a lot of convention events, I never really saw enough people that looked like me.

The local cosplay community, it's big and diverse.

Black and POC cosplayers are here.

We are in numbers, and we have so much to offer not just the cosplay community, but just the nerd and entertainment community in general.

Curry: In a room off the convention floor, Shady Haze is hosting a panel about queer representation in pop culture.

In the community, a lot of geeks are also gay.

So, I got a bunch of friends, and I said, "Let's do a panel about LGBTQ cosplayers and representation in media."

I love cosplaying characters that are male characters, like Cyclops, Superboy, Danny Phantom, Poe from "Star Wars," and I get a lot of, "Oh, you're not representing the characters accurately."

You know, "You're Asian."

"You're small."

"You're a woman."

You know what?

It's fine.

I'm cosplaying the character however I want.

My friends support me, the community supports me, and I do a great job doing it.

Ha ha!

Black Crystal Cosplay: The more of a following I received and when it started to hit certain social media platforms, I started seeing the slurs pop up.

Sometimes it does get hard to continue to navigate these spaces, and there are days where I'm like, "I don't think I even want to do this anymore."

But what I like to do, I just like to prepare other people for it.

"Here are some ways that you could block this out."

"Here are some other ways you could be positive," just to make sure that you're protecting your mental at all times.

I have ups and downs with the community.

Sometimes I deal with racism.

Sometimes I deal with sexism.

Sometimes I deal with colorism.

And so sometimes it can be discouraging, but then I also have, like, friends who I cosplay with, and they make me feel better.

Curry: Walker and the other finalists meet on the main stage for the cosplay finals.

[Cheering and applause] Walker: It's very nerve-wracking because you don't want to sell yourself short and get onstage and be like, "Oh, this person's costume is better than mine," or, "This person's armor is better than mine."

So you just have to take a deep breath and just say, "Well, if I don't win, at least people saw me."

Announcer: ...jewels by hand.

[Cheering and applause] Curry: The competition in the intermediate category is fierce.

This time around, Walker doesn't place.

Reporter: How are you dealing with it?

I'm--I'm OK. Just seeing the crowd, the interactions, doing my little poses, that's always a win for me whether I win or not.

Curry: Whether or not they compete, at an event like Awesome Con, a cosplayer can find like minds.

What makes the community special to me is feeling like I am not alone.

I might reference an obscure anime, and somebody will be like, "Ha!

I get it."

And I'm just like, "Ah!"

It's that feeling of, like, "Yes, you get me!"

Being in a community where you feel so safe, to just have that in the back of my mind and, "Oh, my gosh.

So many haters.

"Why can't this fictional character be personified as a brown-skinned woman?"

When I'm in my Sailor Moon cosplay and I see little brown girls run up to me: "Oh, my God.

You're so beautiful.

I love Sailor Moon!"

I'm just like, "Yes.

Now you've seen someone "that looks just like you.

You can do the same thing, too."

Black Crystal Cosplay: It's OK to be weird.

It's OK to dress up as long as you're having fun.

If it gives you confidence to do that, like, when you're at a convention, it'll give you more confidence in your everyday life.

Curry: Awesome Con takes place in April, but you can find cosplay events year-round throughout the DMV.

Large conventions include Otakon from August 8th through 10th at the Washington Convention Center and Anime USA from October 10th through 12th at the Hyatt Regency, Crystal City.

Be on the lookout for other local events by following Black Crystal Cosplay, Shady Haze, and Plus Ultra Entertainment on social media.

When Ashley Tillery discovered street photography, she found her calling.

♪ She is capturing and amplifying images of the DC area's Black community.

To find out why, we followed her on a shoot on Independence Day.

♪ Tillery: And everybody get as close together as possible.

Tillery, voice-over: I'm a photographer, not by trade or anything, but just by passion.

The focus of my body of work is communities of color wherever I find them.

Tillery: Thank you, guys, so much.

Thank you!

Tillery, voice-over: I really focus on street portraiture.

[Camera shutter clicks] Street photography is a medium where you're looking for chance moments that are inherently ephemeral, and you're capturing them for future generations.

Can I get you guys right here?

Tillery, voice-over: With street photography, you have to show up as your authentic self because those interactions are sometimes very short.

Oh, it's like you guys have done this before.

[Both laugh] Tillery, voice-over: What you need to be a street photographer is you... Oh, see, she got it.

Tillery, voice-over: you and, obviously, a device to capture an image...

Stunning.

and when you are engaging somebody on a human level... And then you kinda look towards her.

Tillery, voice-over: it's an act of trust.

Perfect.

Thank you, guys, so much.

Tillery, voice-over: In portraiture, the photograph is not what happens in the camera.

[Camera shutter clicking] The photograph is what happens on either side of the camera.

It's a document of a human connection.

Curry: Tillery got lots of experience meeting new people while she was growing up.

She moved six times before she graduated high school.

Tillery: My mom's an attorney, and my dad's a retired colonel.

My growing-up experience as a person of color was actually very isolating.

Fast-forward to when I went to Tuskegee University, I was immersed for the first time ever in a Black life.

I saw that there was more to the Black experience than either my parents or what was presented on the news at the time.

My parents got me these cameras because they wanted me to stop doing street photography because they thought it was dangerous.

Heh heh!

So they were like, "Hopefully, this would motivate her "to move into, like, just working in a studio, in a sanitized environment."

When people see a camera like this come out, people tend to become more wary.

All right.

It makes it a challenge to get the intimate shots that I really look for.

In some ways, shooting with a cell phone is the most American thing you can do.

A cell phone is a very democratizing piece of equipment.

Anybody who has a phone has the opportunity to tell their story and to tell it honestly.

When I go taking pictures on a day like the 4th of July, what I'm looking for is the intersection of people and history.

[Camera shutter clicking] It's really important to go out there and capture images that provide narratives that tell more inclusive stories, more diverse stories that I think are truer to what it means to form a more perfect union.

We're gonna start pretty near the, uh, Georgia-Petworth Metro station, and Georgia Avenue has a tremendous amount of history.

You have the Sankofa bookstore over there.

You have the Howard Theatre.

You have Howard University itself.

And I wanted to know if I could take your portrait.

Tillery, voice-over: What I'm looking for in a subject, first and foremost, is something in our shared humanity and history that sets something off in me.

And where are you from?

DC?

Yes, I am.

Tillery, voice-over: The next thing is what type of backgrounds do I have to pull from here, and I guess the third thing is, do they seem amenable to me asking them?

You have Frederick Douglass hair, which is very appropriate on the 4th of July.

Tillery, voice-over: I think, for photographers, Black photographers, especially... Look at me with your eyes.

[Click] Tillery, voice-over: photography can be a weapon.

It's a voice, it's an opportunity to say that the narratives that you present are not true and to reassert the place of African Americans in the American story, to put us in a narrative in a way that reflects our inherent dignity and worth.

So that's a large reason of why I take the, um, pictures I do.

In truth-- Hello.

I am so sorry to bother you.

I saw you walking down the street, and you are absolutely beautiful.

I know that's crazy to say to a man.

Do you mind if I take your portrait?

All right, cool.

And just stand forward in the door.

Awesome.

Tillery, voice-over: The stories sort of present themselves, especially when you're on Georgia Avenue, right?

I didn't even see your braces!

Tillery, voice-over: When we think about braces, we usually think about sort of an innocent time of life, so having him talk about being in jail, but also having those braces, I think it serves to humanize him and say, you know, maybe this person isn't as dangerous or menacing or whatever as the larger society may choose to view him.

I really appreciate you so much.

Thank you.

♪ Curry: Tillery started street portraiture in response to the way photos of slain teenager Trayvon Martin were used by news outlets.

Tillery: What I found so disheartening was not only was this another Black boy gone, but how they chose to portray him in the media, and I started taking photographs of those individuals that I encountered in the neighborhood.

[Camera shutter clicking] And I think part of the exercise for me was processing the national moment that we found ourselves in.

And it was not only asserting the value of Black life to myself, but raising the grandeur and inherent dignity of everyday life.

It is very important that we control our own images.

[Camera shutter clicking] Curry: Tillery displays her work in galleries, on the Web, and on Instagram.

Tillery: The point of putting the images on Instagram goes back to Frederick Douglass, of all people.

Frederick Douglass actually sat for a lot of portraits during his time.

♪ And the reason he did that, according to him, is that what the camera sees is the truth, and so, when he would sit down and take those photographs, it was, in a way, calling everything else in the media landscape a lie.

[Camera shutter clicking] The point of posting the images to Instagram is to provide a counternarrative to much of what you see in the news and to ensure that people of color occupy the imagined spaces that are going to be created by AI.

AI's a technology that can only produce results based on what went before, and so I do think it's incredibly important to have a wide variety of images of people of color present on the internet, so what I'm hoping is that the worlds that we create on the internet don't mirror the same historic inequalities that we've had in this world.

[Camera shutter clicks] It's participating in the dreaming and the narrative creation.

I am so sorry to bother you.

My name's Ashley.

I'm a photographer.

You look so cool.

Thank you.

Do you mind if I take your portrait?

Oh, sure.

It's always great when I meet someone like Angela, where all those various threads come together in a single person.

Not only was it the 4th of July, but this was a Black woman who owned a fireworks stand with her brother.

She was clearly very patriotic, but she was also wearing a "Black Lives Matter" T-shirt, right?

I hope the people who see the pictures stop and consider, "What do all these things mean together?"

On one hand, you want to celebrate liberty.

On the other hand, you realize that if you are not free to survive in your skin...

There we go, right there.

Tillery, voice-over: that's not a form of liberty, and it's definitely not life or the pursuit of happiness.

Beautiful!

Now one with no smile, just... [Click] Tillery, voice-over: For me, street photography is not just taking pictures of people, but also better understanding myself and my history in the context of this great American experiment.

Curry: See more of her work at ashleytillery.com.

While armed conflict in the Civil War ended in 1865, the fight over the war's legacy continues to this day.

One flashpoint--public art.

It took over 50 years from President Lincoln's assassination to dedicate a national monument in his honor.

To us, the Lincoln Memorial may seem uncontroversial, but how it looks and that it exists were not foregone conclusions.

Even though the Lincoln Memorial might be the most famous commemoration of the 16th president, it wasn't the first by far.

The first memorial to Lincoln is this statue by Irish American sculptor Lot Flannery, and you can find it in Judiciary Square.

It was erected in 1868, just 3 years after Lincoln's assassination.

In 1867, Congress incorporated the Lincoln Monument Association to raise funds for a national memorial by sculptor Clark Mills.

Mills' proposed tribute to Lincoln was a 70-foot-high granite and bronze installation near the Capitol.

It would feature 35 statues, and the apex would show Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, but donations didn't add up to enough to build the colossus.

After that, the Congressional Record is silent on Lincoln Memorial efforts until 1901, when Illinois senator Shelby Cullom began introducing bills to incorporate a new Lincoln Memorial Commission.

After several tries, one of his bills became law on June 28, 1902.

[Fanfare plays] ♪ Between Lincoln's death and Senator Cullom's successful bill, the fashion and architecture had turned to the Beaux-Arts style named for the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where many American architects in the 19th century learned their craft.

Students practiced drawing ancient Greek and Roman buildings, and they were taught to value grand halls and formal spaces.

♪ The emerging fashion in urban planning was the City Beautiful movement, promoting, among other things, monumental grandeur in public spaces.

When Beaux-Arts architect Daniel Burnham and City Beautiful landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. designed the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, their aesthetics and philosophies became popular nationwide.

The 1902 McMillan Plan, named for Michigan senator James McMillan, aimed to marry the ideals of the City Beautiful movement with DC's original city plan by Pierre L'Enfant, who had been appointed by President George Washington to design the city layout.

The heart of the McMillan plan was the creation of the National Mall, featuring the Capitol at one end and at the other the proposed Lincoln Memorial in a then-recently-filled-in swath of marshland known as Potomac Park.

♪ Political infighting for and against the site lasted over a decade.

Chief among its opponents was Illinois representative Joe Cannon, chair of the Appropriations Committee and Speaker of the House from 1903-1911.

He had many objections, from cost to aesthetics, and he could not imagine the former silt- and sewage-strewn mudflats becoming a site worthy of a tribute to Lincoln.

♪ In an end run around Cannon and Congress, in 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing the Council of Fine Arts to make recommendations to the cabinet on city planning.

Council members were to be selected by the American Institute of Architects, whose leadership were stalwarts of the Beaux-Arts style and the City Beautiful movement.

The Council met only once, during which it approved the McMillan Plan.

When President Taft succeeded Roosevelt, he created with Congress a new commission.

This potentially undid the decision to place the memorial in Potomac Park, especially because he included Speaker Cannon on the committee.

In theory, Taft's commission evaluated many sites, including near the Capitol, Meridian Hill, Fort Stevens, the Soldiers' Home, and Potomac Park.

In practice, the Potomac Park decision was predetermined because Taft's group assigned the site evaluation to advisors led by Daniel Burnham, whose work helped the Beaux-Arts style and the City Beautiful movement take hold nationwide.

Speaker Cannon continued to fight against the Potomac Park location, including getting architect John Russell Pope to propose designs for other locations.

One design for the Meridian Hill site was a Parthenon-type structure 250 feet high with marble stairs 100 feet wide.

♪ One for the Soldiers' Home site was a Greco-Roman-based design.

♪ Yet another rendering resembled an Egyptian pyramid except with portico entrances.

♪ Cannon was outvoted.

The commission chose the Potomac Park location and architect Henry Bacon's design.

It was a Parthenon-type structure supported by 36 enormous, fluted Doric columns representing the 36 states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death.

It would be made of materials from many states to represent national unity.

Above the colonnade, the names of the 36 states would be inscribed on the frieze, and the chamber would contain a statue of Lincoln.

The memorial took 8 years to complete, from 1914-1922.

To support a massive structure on drained and filled land, the subfoundation was made of 122 solid poured concrete piers with steel reinforcing rods anchored in bedrock.

Workers had to dig 40 feet before building could begin.

Graffiti left by the construction workers is still visible today.

Bacon selected Daniel Chester French to create the statue.

It was originally supposed to be 10 feet high.

However, upon seeing the size of the space, French increased the statue to 19 feet high on top of a 10-foot-tall base.

Beneath the Tennessee marble floor, Massachusetts granite steps, and Indiana limestone walls is a cavernous, damp space full of stalactites and stalagmites, stone deposits created by the moisture that continues to seep through the stone temple built on a former wetland, and from that former wetland, Lincoln gazes east toward the Capitol, whose dome was crowned with the statue of Freedom in 1863, between them, two miles and 100 years of history.

The Lincoln Memorial is open 24 hours a day every day of the week.

For more information, go to nps.gov/linc.

Thank you for watching this episode of "WETA Arts."

Be well, be creative, and enjoy the art all around you.

I'm Felicia Curry.

I want people to walk away from this, no matter if they're a contestant or not, just feeling happiness, that's all.

The question of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is always just that for us-- a question.

♪ Announcer: For more about the artists and institutions featured in this episode, go to weta.org/arts.