Someday I Will Be Free

To create the photographs for the Someday I Will Be Free series, I needed to visit the places within me that I felt uncomfortable expressing; the places in my unconscious and subconscious mind. I decided to create photograms, a camera-less technique, because of its’ immediacy. While my mother was dying I began to look inward and at the physical characteristics we shared. Soon I would be an orphan. It became time to face my fears by letting my vulnerabilities reveal themselves. Overcoming the obstacles before me has always been a challenge that I have faced head on.

I am attempting to express the full range of my emotions and many aspects of my life experiences with photograms. I will also express my spirituality and sexuality in this series. I will use parts of my body and simple everyday objects to symbolize my thoughts, feelings, and my place in the world as an African American male. I will depict the barriers that I’ve broken through and the ones that are still in front of me.

I am a conglomeration of my ancestors. To borrow a phrase from Abbey Lincoln, "I got some Indian in me, I got some Irish in me, I got some German in me, I got some Jewish in me, I got the whole of Africanus in me. I got some people in me, I got some people in me, I got…etc." The fragments that have made me the human being I am are expressed by using fragments of photographic paper that, when combined, complete a bigger picture of myself.