He says, even as his star rose, he found the supposedly progressive independent film world almost “an adversarial community with few filmmakers of color.” He recalls “endless emails from agents who code language, who say my work lacks ‘scope,’ as in, ‘We’re interested in Bradford but worried he only knows how to expose black skin.’ These people don’t know, if you can expose black skin correctly, you can expose anything. I mean, until David Lowery came along, I never expected to work with a white filmmaker.” For his part, Lowery, who made the acclaimed drama “A Ghost Story” and the Disney remake “Pete’s Dragon,” said, “I am obsessed with texture. I want movies you feel you can reach out and touch, and Bradford does that, but also, the truth is, you have to want to spend five months joined at the hips with a (cinematographer), and after one breakfast with him, he was so generous I felt like we were related.”