O T H E R

2009 When I was little, there was no “check all that apply” in the ethnicity box on school forms. There was only “check one” and my mother would proceed to check two boxes– African-American and Caucasian– and draw a line linking the two.  On the playground sometimes kids would ask, “Is that your mother?” or “Are you adopted?” to which I would indignantly reply yes and no.  I never gave much thought to my family looking different until outside sources made me aware of it.  Sometimes people wanted me to choose a side, “You’ve never heard of the One Drop Rule?” Other times people were content to label me without asking any questions.  The series Other, was my first artistic response to these questions and ideas.  The project consists of portraits traditionally printed in black and white with words scratched finely over the mouths of the out-of-focus subjects, and in-focus digital color photographs of the subjects.  The blurry way a subject appears in an image takes away the identity of the person while the words take away their voice, leaving someone else’s ideas about them in place. The color images show the subjects as they are, diverse human beings.