FORTUNE
Writings
A Certain Freedom
This piece presents me in a cowboy costume inspired by a 1960s Elvis promo image, later used by Andy Warhol in his Double Elvis print. The red shirt, pulled from Warhol’s pop art version, and the yellow shirt from Sheriff Bart from Blazing Saddles layering satire with iconic imagery. I quick-drew on the two large prints using an 1870s Peacemaker, letting the randomness of luck, chance, and skill guide the shot placement. At the heart of this piece is the cowboy—a symbol of rugged individualism long embedded in American mythology. But this mythology, so central to America’s identity, is a constructed fantasy, a story built on erasure, distortion, and violence. This work uses the myth of the cowboy to critique America’s gun culture, its obsession with violence, and the sanitized narratives we consume. The figure’s direct gaze challenges the viewer to confront the lies at the core of the nation’s mythos, asking not just what we believe, but why we believe it. The semi-transparent nature of the print allows the image and the figure within it to bleed into the space around it, representing the omnipresent and inescapable threat of death. This transparency also points to complicity: the viewer is implicated, whether they choose to engage or look away. The title, taken from a James Baldwin quote, reflects on the freedom that can only exist under the constant threat of death. That freedom, born from constant awareness of mortality, strips away illusion, forcing a more honest confrontation with self and society.
Meet Me In Samara
For me, this photograph, only the second art piece I’ve made, is an exploration of self-destruction, identity, and the complexities of existence, seen through the lens of Black culture. My head is ablaze, with fire taking the place of my
hair, a symbol within the Black community. Hair represents history, familial love, resistance, personal expression, and a celebration of Black identity. The fire, though destructive, becomes transformative—a painful but necessary process of freeing the self. The suit, a callback to Pink Floyd's album Wish You Were Here, nods to themes of loss, freedom, and the corporate structures that limit individual exploration. The title, taken from a short story about the inescapability of death, underscores the futility of escape and the simultaneous desire to break free. The direct gaze serves to make you complicit in the scene. Shot practically on a 4x5 camera, this work is a visual meditation on life’s impermanence and the inescapability of our choices.