I've been shooting for about eleven years, since I was 13. My parents are divorced and my mom moved-- it's kind of a story. My mom moved to South Carolina-- to a very small town. So going from living in New York City to moving to South Carolina. During that time, I developed depression and anxiety, because of that big change. And because I didn't have the resources to really cope with it, I definitely turned to photography. Well, I draw my inspiration from my surroundings, definitely. My neighborhood is such a place of joy. Just wandering is so important to me. It just inspires me to stay close to the ground and to never stop looking around. There's definitely a tension within my work. As it's evolved, I've definitely noticed it more and more. There's always the questioning of "why?" in places that feel familiar. I think that's a really interesting concept to play with. My work is definitely inspired by Black painters of the past like Jacob Lawrence, Mary T. Smith, Sister Gertrude Morgan, and Benny Andrews. I feel like when I look at their paintings, it's a place I want to live. I wish we all looked like that all the time. It's about creating this new world and I felt like that was something that I was drawn to. I'm very confident in my work and it's a place that I feel I can be as loud or as quiet. It's a place where if I want to hide, I can hide in there. It's a place where I can just explode and be whoever I want. It's great to be a part of a generation of creators and people in the industry who are maybe a bit more sensitive towards people who are different than them. I think the people in the book are expressing themselves wholeheartedly and I think it's important to recognize that and continue to get better and be better so that we can give to other people that look like me and look like us in the book. And show them that it is possible to create in any way that you'd like. And so it's important to me to express myself because I feel like there's people who might latch on to that and be inspired as well.