I'm a photographer based in Los Angeles, California. When I think about it, I've been a photographer most of my life. My first camera was a Kodak Brownie, I spotted it one day on the shelf above my dad's blue La-Z-Boy. This little box was a relic but that was it's charm. Luckily at that time you could still find film for them. I would photograph my friends and document our adventures around our neighborhood. Inkster, Michigan, is a small predominantly black suburb of Detroit. Like many suburbs of Detroit, Inkster sprang up to house the flow of African Americans fleeing the south in search of freedom to live and create their lives. My dad would drive me to Cunninghams drug store to drop the film off and about a week later I had a packet of 4x6 color photographs, that would have my friends and I rolling in the grass with laughter. Photography was a constant in our house though the word itself was never used. instead we would refer to it as "taking pictures". My family photos documented my parents' dreams and our revolutionary existence, a thriving black family in a thriving black neighborhood. Our numerous photo albums were kept in chronological order in separate books tucked away in a cabinet next to the couch. There was a whole album of black and white photos from the 40's and 50's. I was no where to be found in this particular album, since I was the youngest of 4, but I believe I gazed at that album the most. Years later I found myself studying Art at Parsons School of Design in Paris, I enrolled in a photography class and fell in love with portrait photography. This mediums  ability to lift the familiar everyday human existence to cultural importance and show the complex beauty in life, is my way of understanding beauty.