Joy | Photography

Taken in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, GA, this portrait uses a wide-open aperture to remove the one branch and the subject from the rest of the forest. To me, this photographic isolation represents an experience of growing up in the South as a person of color during the 1990s. As a child, I often fled from the prejudice of white classmates and took solace in nature, where I could hold onto the sacred knowledge that beauty existed still in a few untainted corners of the world.