Testify is born from a persistent question: Who owns our stories? This project seeks to reclaim the narrative of American history from oversimplified tales, stories that omit, distort, or romanticize the voices and truths of Black lives. My work confronts the aftermath of the Civil War and the Confederacy, exploring how these narratives continue to shape our collective memory, dictated by those who wield control over the pen, the books, and the classrooms.
As part of this work, I have followed the path of photographers like Sally Mann, documenting my family, my immediate and extended kin, and occasionally those very close to me. This approach is both a personal and political act of reclamation. By photographing my family, I affirm Black presence in history, establishing our place not only as witnesses but as archivists, historians, and storytellers. In a society that often overlooks Black family stories, my work serves as advocacy for inclusion, asserting that Black families belong within the archival and artistic landscape of America.
With Testify, my purpose is to educate and bear witness, to say, "We were here, we lived this, and our voices are ours to share." I aim to inspire viewers to confront not only the historical narrative of this land but also the present echoes within themselves. My hope is to foster a sense of shared testimony, where each of us becomes both student and teacher, listener and speaker.
Through this project, I encourage viewers to engage in their own acts of witnessing—to journal, record, and reflect on the power of a single story—the kind of story that can shift understanding. Testify is an invitation to look beyond textbooks and headlines and become living witnesses, documenting, reflecting, and questioning.
Visually, Testify is both contemporary and timeless, a merging of the now and the then. My work holds an ethereal quality, inspired by wet plate, tintype, and daguerreotype as if these images are echoes, voices calling out through the layers of history. The pieces are portraits and conceptual works, visual representations of memory and identity, with each image acting as a page, a chapter, a moment of remembrance, an archive in itself.
Documenting my family through these techniques is a deliberate choice to place our images in dialogue with traditional, historical forms of portraiture. This approach reclaims Black family narratives in an archival style often associated with early American history but rarely includes Black subjects. It underscores the presence and continuity of Black families across generations and positions us as active participants in the American narrative.
As a Black woman, I know that this work is my responsibility and my purpose. I have seen the consequences of misinformation, of voices lost to silence or distortion. Testify is my contribution to reclaiming those voices and truths. It is a reminder for us all to ask, Who is telling this story? My work is a call to action for everyone to reflect, to research, and to recognize that our narratives hold power and that power belongs to those who have lived, those who know, and those who dare to tell their truth.
