He started at home, with his parents, asking them why they do what they do as police officers, and what has kept them in uniform. Edwards found the talks with his parents instructive because, he says, “there had been this gap in understanding [between him and his parents] that made room for me to kind of develop this hate for the police over time.”

His simmering contempt might come as a surprise to people who know Edwards and his parents. They might assume Edwards should have a staunch affinity for the law and those who enforce it. But they would be wrong.

“There is this notion that I have this black-and-white view of what is right … when it comes to the law,” Edwards says, “what is deemed as okay, and what’s not okay. And that's just not true. Not everything that’s right is legal, and vice-versa.”

Beyond the assumptions, Edwards said the most difficult part of capturing “Black Outlined Blue” was anticipating the reaction to it. Having grown up with police officers as parents, he has always seen their humanity on display. But he doesn’t want his positive portrayal of officers to be interpreted as a counter-narrative to the efforts of those in the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I didn’t want the project to be pigeonholed into a kind of specific narrative — like, ‘Oh, cops are people, too,’ or like, ‘They aren't all bad.’ You know, that all-cops-aren’t-bad type of deal. We know those things, and they’re pretty obvious.

“What I find interesting is this dichotomy of identity. There are certain professions that become a person's identity, like it's more than just a job. Like being a firefighter or a doctor or a lawyer or something like that. It's not just what you do; it becomes who you are. And so this duality of identity, of being an officer and being a black person in America, is something that interests me. And that's what informs this.

“We know they are people like us. I want to do something deeper than that. Like, how do you be a person and a cop, too, and be black? My parents are still that and will always be that. They were my example.”

Edwards got the project rolling by earning the trust of one APD officer and then building a network. Wholly through word of mouth and cultivating relationships, he brought more of Atlanta’s black cops into the project. And he discovered, by building those personal relationships, that his parents were not anomalies.

He shot images of APD officers at locations that meant something to them, and asked them to write about their own experiences. Their words cover the motivations, the obstacles they face, and the realities of being black cops.

“It's all been accurate, because I'm not infusing anything in the project,” Edwards says. “This project is really centered around their own words. I asked them questions. I want to get to know them and want to get to know their journey as officers, to [know] what conflicts and things have arisen from them being … black and also being in this role.”

Edwards discovered a shift in attitudes among the officers. The notion that cops reflexively “back the blue,” irrespective of the situation, isn’t really a thing anymore.