Meet Chermelle Edwards

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chermelle Edwards.

Hi Chermelle, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today. 
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I went to college here as well, but I didn’t discover specialty coffee and its source of origin until after college. This baffled me because I had no ideation that coffee’s birthright was Ethiopia. This began a simple journey of exploring coffee In Los Angeles, my hometown, and soon thereafter, my second home in New York City. I moved to New York a couple years after college, and the specialty coffee scene was burgeoning as it was here in Los Angeles. So, I had two coasts – the West and the East – which had my heart and had me tumbling deep into the neverendingrabbit hole of specialty coffee. 

At the time, there were a few female-identifying voices who were blogging on coffee, and I gravitated to them like Espresso Adventures and Little Black Coffee Cup. Additionally, there was a blog I loved called Dear Coffee; I Love You. I read these three religiously. Yet, I still yearned for more. That more was my voice, it was my connection to understanding coffee as well as bringing the language to the experiences that coffee was beginning to conjure in me. I believed then, as I do now, that coffee is a beautiful impetus to recall memories and to bring us back to ourselves. I started off blogging on Tumblr, taking portraits of people who I found at coffee shops. This graduated to a full-on webzine, where I published articles, portraits, coffee stories, and all things culture. Coffee is a culture, and so my work is to cartographize this. 

I have to thank social media for being a preserver of a lot of my stories and journeys – Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly known as Twitter. Late last spring, in a highly unfortunate circumstance, I lost my website while undergoing a health scare, and thus, all of my published content. This is the first time that I’m speaking about it in any public forum, as it was quite traumatic for me. Thus, the redesigning of TheCoffeetographer.com is now in works. I am excited for what it will be while also being able to restore some iconic images I’ve maintained in my personal archive throughout my more than ten years on this wonderful cultural journey. 

I owe a big part of my independent spread to being a consumer of coffee itself. I am woman of the people, I’m naturally curious, and I seek out interesting concepts and cultural collaborations where coffee is uniquely highlighted. We have a lot of this now, as evidenced in fashion, beauty, architecture, and design. It’s quite incredible, and I knew this kind of critical pop culture mass would arrive, and I’m here for it! I also think being a person who likes to share what she does has helped my journey to where I am today. I’m not concerned with going viral; I’m wanting to help people understand what they might like if they knew it existed. I want people to know the power of a fruit that is just a coffee bean and that is even if they aren’t a coffee drinker. 

Coffee culture, by the nature of its name, is about coffee, right? However, it is so much more than that. It’s about all the things that make a culture just that: a composite of experiences that involves artistic forms like music, design, and the aesthetic of beauty. It is my work and my pleasure to show these things through context. 

I believe that a pure love for discovery, the stories of the people – the farmers, the producers, the baristas and the consumers – has inspired me to take a notion of interest into a full-on revolution for the culture. As a woman of color and a woman in specialty coffee, I’ve had to pay some dues to understand what coffee is, how it behaves, and also what it can be. This motivated me to ant to go to origin countries as a point of coffee interest. As a lover of travel, it became easy to find specialty coffee in places I desired. I’ve traveled and covered coffee and associated drinks in Hawai’i, Colombia, Vietnam, Bangkok, Paris, Lisbon, India, Barcelona, to name a few. I’ve yet to tap the breadth of experiencing coffee in the world. – the pandemic put a big pause on travel so I’m excited to resume world domination. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No road is smooth unless it is freshly paved. 

While there were bloggers, writers before me. There was not a me. 

Truthfully, it is easy being who I am, I accept my cultural birthright which is of beauty, genius and a storyteller. What has been challenging at times as for most creatives is finding resource to support the dream. It’s also been challenging at times to be one of none, only because you still must stand as you are in spaces that may not even be ready for you. Additionally, being independent, meaning my webzine was never sponsored by ads floating across its space or major sponsorships, it mean that I had to fund my work. I believe this experience allowed readers to know that what I shared was authentic and also what I really wanted to say. 

I’m not opposed to sponsorships. And in the history of The Coffeetographer, I have had select partnerships with brands and coffee shops that forwarded its cultural mission, and I’m supremely grateful for these opportunities. 

Another challenge was realizing that many who were the so-called ‘gatekeepers of the culture’ weren’t necessarily more knowledgeable than myself. It can feel like because someone holds the title of barista or writer that they may have a healthy amount of experience on the ground or from traveled experiences. The deeper I got into the culture, the more I realized how many individuals hadn’t been to origin, hadn’t versed themselves in diving deep into the outliers of specialty coffee or the pop culture that was looking for a voice within it. Additionally, one has to drink a lot of not-so-good coffee to get too great. This isn’t talked about a lot because, yes, coffee can be subjective. However, over a decade in, I know that subjective doesn’t mean that there aren’t standards for good and even great. 

If a culture can Michelin star a restaurant, coffee should be able to do the same despite how utilitarian it is viewed. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I work professionally as a writer, photographer, and a social media strategist. 

I love words and the composition of language. I’m known for being a storyteller and my strategic way of organizing content with culture. 

Professionally, I work independently and have done so for over a decade after leaving corporate America. I enjoy collaborations, partnerships, and crafting stories that reach the human psyche and spirit. 

I’m most proud of being the first daughter of my mother and father. I believe they poured into me and my siblings, and I am eternally grateful for how they nurtured my imagination. My father was a wonderful man and dad, not because he was mine, but because it was in his DNA. Five years ago this year, my father fell asleep in death after a quick and vicious battle with cancer. However, he was a proponent of ideation, using one’s imagination and exhausting our creativity. 

I recently rebranded my business in his namesake; it is called Mister Edwards. It is through this professional arm that I now work with businesses, especially small ones, which he had a passion for to help tell their stories for today’s social media platforms. This work is just one way I get to keep my dad with me always as well as bring greater good to businesses that have a story to tell. 

What was your favorite childhood memory?
When we were young – I have four siblings – our parents often took us on summer road trips. What I loved about packing up and going was the idea of being in the car, in the backseat with a book or a puzzle, and in the open air. I loved moving, seeing, exploring with my aisles, feeling like the act of going was already the adventure even before we got to the destination. I also loved how my mom would pack us the best snacks, individualized for our particular tastes. 

I remember the places like Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico vividly. as places we often visited, with stops along the way where my dad talked to people who were complete strangers, but it seemed like he knew them for a lifetime. I remember eating at diners once and never going again, but I remembering the smell of their pancakes, the cracked mirror on a wall, or a waitress who refilled our mugs with cold milk as if it was bottomless coffee. 

And on these trips, I remember arriving. Arriving, as in where the car stopped, where we were supposed to then live for a couple of weeks or a month. While doing so on these trips, it was like a second home, and we had friends there, sometimes family there, so it didn’t feel like we were ‘away’ but just living our life in another part of the country. I think this made a big impression upon me as to how I treat being in other spaces and how at home I am in the world, wherever I am, and whoever I am with. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecoffeetographer.com
• Instagram: @thecoffeetographer
• Facebook: Coffeetographer
• Twitter: Coffeetographer

Image Credits
Chérmelle D. Edwards