Other Works
Portrait Project: Naiomi
Project Statement
The longitudinal Portrait Project: Naiomi is not only an attempt to capture identity formation but also a document of how relationships evolve when given space to breathe, how the camera records transformation that happens too slowly for daily observation, and how the ritual of annual meeting—a deliberate constraint—creates its own form of connection.
The project began in 2020 when Naiomi was seventeen, a high school senior on a museum trip. What started as a straightforward portrait has become documentation of parallel transformations—hers and mine, individual and relational. Each year's photograph captures not just her aging and life changes, but how our dynamic shifts: how I see her differently, how she sees me differently, how the camera records what we might not consciously recognize.
During our September 2025 session, Naiomi asked to break tradition and meet more than once yearly. I agreed, uncertain whether abandoning the constraint would change the project. Life kept the boundary for us—we only saw each other once more before the next session. By our August 2026 session, her life had gotten fuller, and I felt it behind the camera. I opened up more this session, too. I took 190 photos over three hours. In every previous year, I chose the most composed, most flattering image. This time, I chose one from the first minutes of the session, before either of us had fully settled in. For the first time, the photo feels like it's of both of us.
The Women Who Raised Me
Project Statement
Creating these collages forced me to excavate not just facial features, but gestures, conversations, withheld emotions—tracing how trauma transmits among the women in my family across four generations. Working first on the collages, then photographing them from my desk, gave me a chance to inhabit these women's perspectives while bringing them into my present space as an attempt at physical connection across time and loss.
Bryan & Manu
Cartimar Market
