Over the last five years, I have been making portraits of people from different parts of the world, in contexts where they are at home, either literally or generally. I have photographed Cubans, Northern Californian architects and designers, ranchers in Southern California, Tanzanian subsistence farmers, Burundian refugees, my own family, and refugees who have been resettled to Phoenix, Arizona.
I want to foster greater compassion and understanding between people. I also want more people to have the experience I have had of seeing first hand what it looks like to live as a subsistence farmer in sub-Saharan Africa and what it looks like to live as a successful architect in Sausalito, California. Most people don’t get the opportunity to step outside of their class, their location and their cultural identity. I want to give people that experience. I think pictures have the power to move people’emotionally, intellectually, spiritually’and that’s what I am hoping to do.