Interview by Lamar Kendrick-Dial
How does your work usually start?
How does my work start….I would say a lot of my photos are candid or in the moment. I’m usually not really thinking about it. Most often I just look at everyday actions in people and memorialize them through my images. If there’s a specific story that I wanna tell, I’ll look for people that can help me tell those stories. I prefer shooting with everyday people, or like people I’ve interacted with in my life. People who don’t typically model, since I think it’s important that people see themselves physically in artwork.
How would you describe your current work? How does it differ from your past work?
I feel like all of my work is connected. My work is a growing extension of when I started making photographs in 2015. My current work is a labor of love, It’s memories, current moments happening in real time, and honestly experimentation. It’s a lot. I’m experimenting a lot with motion, and I’ve been into physically altering work and working with negatives and physical paper – when I started, it was mainly into just a lot of digital work, or regular film and print.
What do you take inspiration from outside of photography?
Life.
Is connection between you and the people you photograph important? How so?
Well, yes. Building a connection is important very important to me – especially with strangers – because comfortability is essential. Even with personal work, if a stranger comes in front of my camera, they already have a certain level of trust in me based on my past work. I often find myself in scenarios where people express how comfortable they are quickly. It’s in the presence and pacing of a shoot, I don’t approach with just my camera. I approach with words and conversation first and the photos come after. But with my family, I would say they really inform my photography. Just because of all of our different family dynamics, and seeing like the results of trauma and love and hate … all of it. With me documenting my families different connections with each other, sometimes I feel that I’m making work for them….. but I’m also documenting them. I want them to see themselves in images, the good and the bad. I find beauty in that.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Popeyes sweet & spicy wings.
What are you watching right now?
Well I’m rewatching girlfriends right now-it’s my comfort show.
What are you reading?
Women & migration(s) II edited by Kaila Brooks, Cheryl Finley, Ellyn Toscano, & Deborah Willis- a series of essays.
What are you listening to?
In this very moment I have Eddie Kendricks’ Intimate Friends playing haha.
What’s the first thing you do every morning?
Give myself one tight hug. Then I turn on some tunes and go on about my day.