In 2018 tragedy struck the Black Transgender Community in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2020 I ended up directing a documentary about it and how the community continues to heal.
2020 has been largely characterized by a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, in a mediascape largely oversaturated with varying perspectives, it is perhaps more crucial now more than ever that black voices are heard. Within a week of George Floyds death there were already protests happening across the United States. One of these protests was a Justice Caravan hosted by the Jacksonville Community Action Committee in Downtown Jacksonville on May 30th 2020.
Motivated additionally by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbury, Breonna Taylor and Jamee Johnson, the protest served as a call to action for more police accountability. The importance of these protests lies in the fact that they show exactly what the American citizens want and are tired of. They are important because the right to even gather was a right people before us had to fight even harder for, and its accurate documentation serves to show exactly what happened so future generations may know our point of view.
During my Summer 2020 internship I was assigned the role of student researcher for a research paper documenting the Black Press pre-Civil rights moment. My particular focus was in the evolution in how political comics regarding the matter overtime, which expanded to the influence and importance of visual media in telling the story of Black America. Being a photographer, it only felt natural to contribute to the conversation the best way I know how.
My full body of research is available right here
After a long hiatus I wanted to do something outside my comfort zone. I tended to do traditional portraiture but I wanted to see how much could be expressed with just the body. I wanted to challenge myself to avoid depending on the familiarity of a beautiful face to ground the work.
Deviating from my comfort zone in another way was using a much narrower angle lens as a means of sort of fragmenting the subject so that the focus is the abstract simplicity of their parts instead of the familiarity of the whole body. The same reason why I choose (and am choosing for a while) to shoot primarily in black and white. To keep focus on the composition.
I also kind of wanted to deal with the idea of touch starvation. I’m a sucker for physical intimacy, past even the sexual sense. It’s a whole love language to me. You don’t realize how much you like to be held and touched until you’ve gone a long time without it, ya dig?
Hurricane Irma 2017
Adroit Journal 22 August 2017
for herbeautymag.com
