Crowded House

In June of 1993, my family and I moved from our home on the east side of Detroit to the neighboring, sprawling, and spacious suburbs of Southfield. A location where mid‑century modern homes are dominant, and where the Black residents would eventually become the dominant percentage as well. Over the years, our family home became the source of many celebrations, laughter, sibling rivalry, disagreements, and a place of mourning. A myriad of emotions attached to complicated memories of the past—which inspired me to create this series titled, Crowded House. Crowded with memories that perpetually overlap, which have often taken place in the same rooms, under the same roof, at my family home of over 30 years. For this project, I used a flatbed scanner to digitize the 4"x6" photographs that were initially captured using a disposable film camera, a digital projector to display the photographs, and a digital camera to document the projected photographs—in the exact areas of my home where the photographs were initially taken of me and my family over the years.

Crowded House is a visual continuation where I’m documenting and preserving my family history in a home where I’ve resided for most of my life. This project is giving these forgotten photographs a new existence, because for so long, me and my family have archived them in various photo albums and photo boxes—over time, becoming forgotten. This series serves as a duality of existence—there is a continuum in these spaces, which also, challenges stereotypes about the Black experience—especially my experience of growing up in the suburbs of Southfield, Michigan, which shares part of its southern border with Detroit—making the cities close in proximity, but visually, worlds apart. As I continue to work on this project, I’ve realized that placement is habitual. Like the piano that sits in the living room and the wood-paneled walls that have lined the family room for several years, while everything around us changes, there are certain aspects of ourselves that remain unmoved or unchanged.