There is a common narrative, both written and visual, about the black image in photography. Cultural commentators on the latent image rarely admit that the narrative they initiate through discourse on images of Black Americans is at best neutral and mostly loaded with stereotypes and negative perspectives. The continuation of the "white gaze" and the resultant "photographic white gaze," has shaped our common collective histories  into implicit bias which people of color continue to experience. 

These photographs, created for "Hoodied Up," are a factual description and a visually poetic interpretation of their lives and their pain of being cast not only as non- white, but as "Others."