Naaja Kirkland — Naaj.
Naaja Kirkland is a St. Louis creative whose imagination has never fit comfortably inside a single title. During the years he released music as Naaj., his ideas moved freely between songwriting, performance, visual direction, styling, lighting, narrative, and the larger atmosphere surrounding a project. He did not simply ask whether an idea worked—he questioned how it could be dismantled, reinterpreted, and rebuilt into something no one else in the room had considered.
I met Naaja through Keaton D. Jones and the creative circle surrounding Alex Oren and Jack Spear. Alongside Alex, Jack, and Joseph X, he was part of Unique Vision, a group where music, filmmaking, friendship, and experimentation continually overlapped. We became close through those collaborations, but some of our most meaningful moments happened away from formal productions, when we would spend hours talking through ideas and imagining everything they might become.
More than almost anyone I knew during that period, Naaja pushed me to challenge my first instinct. He could take an idea I thought I understood, turn it completely upside down, and reveal another perspective hiding underneath it. Our conversations encouraged me to think beyond making a technically strong photograph and consider symbolism, atmosphere, emotion, contradiction, and the experience an image could leave behind.
We created many portraits together simply because we enjoyed experimenting. There was rarely a strict assignment or commercial objective. We would build around whatever inspired us at the time—an environment, a piece of clothing, an unusual light, a character, or an idea that sounded impossible until we began trying to photograph it. Those sessions became a space where both of us could test our instincts without needing every experiment to arrive at a perfect answer.
That shared curiosity eventually led to “Chaos freeSTyLe,” a music video presented by Unique Vision and Dorm Room Entertainment in 2019. Keaton directed the film, while Naaja, Keaton, and I developed its creative direction together. I served as Director of Photography alongside co-DP Chloë Schneider, Jack Spear led the lighting production, and Alex Oren mixed and mastered the record. The production also brought Alex, Jack, Joseph X, Keaton, Caty Witte, and Chloë into the visual world as characters and performers.
The film gave us permission to lean fully into disorder, character, darkness, and surreal imagery. Rather than attempting to make the freestyle feel polished or predictable, we built a world that reflected the energy of its title. It became one of the clearest examples of what working with Naaja felt like: familiar ideas disrupted, perspectives inverted, and the entire crew encouraged to create beyond the safest interpretation.
My photographs of Naaja preserve both the artist he presented publicly and the friend who continually expanded the way I thought. They represent a formative chapter when creativity felt unrestricted—when hanging out could become a portrait session, a conversation could become a concept, and a group of friends could turn an impossible idea into a finished world.
