About
Contemporary Southern identity is complex. Black Southern identity is layered with historical truths, with equal amounts of lies and betrayals. My images capture the essence of the South and her dark people. My calling is to visually interrogate the spirit of existing within the margins of a placid society and those who are “othered” by past structural norms.
I am convinced that photography can be redemptive, as images free us to see who we are, outside ourselves, if but momentarily, if it visualizes the expressions that hold sway over a population; and endeavors to capture the people, and how they inhabit their own place, even if that space is a dream.
What is not a dream, is that we live in a realm where despair and hope coexist. I've tried to make a portrait in and of that space. The images become two-dimensional provocations of silent statements and are unavoidable confrontations between the viewer and sitter.
Artist Vita
EDUCATION
MFA, School of Art and Design
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
AB, Political Science
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Academic Faculty Experience
+ University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
+ Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
+ Saint Augustine University, Raleigh, North Carolina
PRESENTATION
Gibbs Museum of Art, Charleston, SC May 2022
Understanding William Eggleston and Color in The American South
Click Photography Festival at The North Carolina Museum of Art October 2021
Keynote: Portraiture As Political Struggle
Duke University Forum for Scholars and Publics March 2021
Race, Representation, and the Photographic Image
Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan October 2020
Forum on Race, Justice, and Equity
Mississippi Arts (The Max Museum of Art) August 2020
“The Relationship Between Society, Race, and Class, in the Deep South”
Harvard University March 2018
Black Bodies and Documentary Portraiture Authorship: “Hoodied Up!”Presented at Black Portraiture IV: The Color of Silence Conference, Cambridge, MA.
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Smithsonian Photography Initiative
Washington, DC
Smithsonian Archives
Washington, District of Columbia
Smithsonian Anacostia Museum of African American Art and History
Washington, District of Columbia
North Carolina Museum of Art
Raleigh, North Carolina
North Carolina Folklife Institute
Durham, North Carolina
Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University
Durham, NC
LeHigh University Zoeller Galleries
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
North Carolina Central University Museum of Art
Durham, North Carolina
Do Good Fund
Columbus, Georgia
Casa de Africa
Havana, Cuba
Various Private Collectors