home is a foreign place (2021)
Inspired by Zarina’s suite of thirty-six woodcut prints by the same title, this series interrogates the multiple, intersecting dimensions of home. Living overseas in 2020, my home was not only geographically foreign but - as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold - also in configuration, use and definition. For this series, I converted words that represented my domestic space/place during this period into a series of photographic icons — a process of both exploring and remembering. As Zarina herself recalled about her own work, “home is not necessarily a permanent place…It is an idea we carry with us wherever we go. We are our homes.” This photo series was published in 2022 by Ottawa Photography & Art Label (OPAL) Magazine.
day in the life (2019)
Taken over a 24-hr period in Lima, Peru as part of the 24HrProject, an initiative that connects emerging photographers, aspiring photojournalists and visual storytellers around the world. The project reaches millions of individuals annually showcasing the human connection of images and stories. My interpretation of the 2019 project theme - Women’s Rights - applied a photojournalistic eye on Lima’s ‘invisibles’, the street vendors, nightclub employees, fisherpeople and market workers who eke out their livelihoods on the fringes and in the off hours. Several photos from this series appeared in the 2019 Documenting Humanity, an exhibit at the Iranian Art Forum in Tehran.
girls not brides (2013-16)
In Ethiopia, two in every five girls are married before their 18th birthday and nearly one in five girls marries before the age of 15. Child marriage remains a deeply-rooted tradition in many Ethiopian communities and functions, in many cases, as a source of livelihood for families. It also increases the likelihood that girls will not attend school and will suffer complications as a result of early pregnancy and childbirth. Taken in rural Ethiopia between 2013-16, this photo series encourages the viewer to interrogate beyond the statistics. The young girls I met during these visits were both determined and committed to accessing education and renegotiating gender roles and expectations in their communities, which these photos seek to convey. Photos from this series were acquired for exhibits that have shown in Bolivia, Canada, Ethiopia and France.