Under the Same Sun (2019-Present) visualizes the interconnectedness and transnationality of the Black Diaspora through a familial album of portraiture, domestic interiors, and cherished possessions. The photographs weave together the lives of three women, Apple, Yuvette, and my mother, Anne, within a family archive that embodies the rhizomatic expansion of the Diaspora. This project links the intangible yet unmistakable signifiers and commonalities of Black Diasporic life that transcend socio-economic, generational, and geographic boundaries.
Drawing from my experience as a first-generation person of African descent, these photographs begin to mend and reassemble the fracturing I witnessed early on between the African and Black American communities. This project builds upon memories of my past in service of unearthing relation within the Diaspora of the present. Under the Same Sun centers portraits of women that project defiance, resilience, and a demanding to be seen in a world that does not always want to see them.
The photographs interrogate the complex intersection of cultural inheritance and colonial influence illuminating the creolization through which each woman negotiates her identity. In the layering of images environments come together to assert both shared practice and Diasporic relation. This photographic album is a living project and a growing archive. Like the Diaspora, it is limitless in its renderings – transforming over time as new subjects are visualized.