I Get It From My Mama

Black & White Photographs | 2018

These photographs of my grandmother, my mother, and myself; respectively, were taken in Virginia, over a period of many decades, and three generations. They are Virginia history, an unkept history, depicting the way my matrilineage used to ride horses in the same manner so many patriarchal figures sit atop monuments. These portraits now serve as a visual record, revealing traces of our stories - both culturally and visually - of our origins, our use of space, our physical features, and our existence.

Put differently, these portraits reveal clues to the past, and relate the development of a family to the development of a land. The portrait of my grandmother was taken in situ. She rode her horse Silver often to carry out her familial chores growing up, and in the background you see the thick woods of the land she grew up on. In contrast, my portrait was taken on a well-kept farm, complete with a white picket fence, and someone to hold the horse I’d just met.

"We can even state as a general principle that the face [hair, clothing, traditions, our use of space] is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence of the origins of peoples."
- Count Constantin de Volney (cited in African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, by Cheika Anta Diop)