My family lineage is foggy. It is not easily traced or defined. But in that haze I have come to feel a familial connection to all black people who share in the same history of oppression and prejudice. Every new black image excites me; in these images I see distant relatives and long lost friends. To me all black people have been forged into a grand family united by a shared collective memory of diaspora. I wish to photograph black people in my art to show the interconnected web of black life that I have felt and dreamt of as a child. I desire to create a body of work that connects black faces and blackness throughout time via the framework of one living breathing family.
I work mostly with my family and community in Brooklyn, New York to create images. I’m interested in themes of masculinity, intimacy and the fashioning of identity through clothing and gesture. In particular I'm interested in the ways they intersect with blackness. At the heart of my work is the desire to recreate and reimagine the ways black people and blackness have been photographed.
