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This is a series of heritage portraits based on vintage family and other historical photographs. These portraits connect our personal histories to heritage sites and cultural artifacts in a way that denies the politics of imperialism. The portraits interrogate and resist the dominant historical narratives written by colonialist empires about the people they have displaced and creatively reimagine them.
When asked why they wanted to collaborate on an Ancestor portrait, so many of the people that I photographed explored questions of identity, belonging and the loss of homeland. In these works we create our own narratives to portray our identities as we see them.
The people in these portraits have been on a journey to explore their ancestral roots, learning their heritage languages, practicing family recipes, archiving family history. A photograph can create a sense of place where none existed, a connection to who we are and where we came from, even in a culture that holds no space for us.
Speaking Through the Silence
Indkna (Here We Are)
That Hope is You
But We Are Not Destroyed
Welcome
My Grandfather Talks to Fairuz
The Bride Հարսը
Hrant Kebantsi
From My Grandmother's Hands
Winning in America
Isahakyan’s Dream
I am the fountain, you the water
Our Land is Not for Your Exploitation
The New Freedom Fighters
Fedayi
Mornings with Fairuz
Archiving Our Existence