About the Exhibit

Roots. Self. Gaze. has been my journey as a photographer, media producer, scholar, and student.

This exhibit started a year ago as a project on black dancers and evolved into an exploration of Southern identity and space through different forms of artistic media. Having traveled to different parts of the U.S. for this project, I was drawn to how the participants’ complex relationship with the place they call ‘home.’

The photographs in this exhibition explore the relationship between location, identity, and self- representation. I used black and white photography to highlight how identities are composite and multifaceted and I asked my participants to select the location for the shoots that they felt best represented them. Each subject in this series reveals the nuances of being black, LGBTQ+, and from the South.