In Their Hands is a photoserie archive. My photographs do not just document people; they honor the histories, labor, memory, and care carried within them. These images affirm identity and resilience.This work is rooted in Édouard Glissant’s right to opacity. He argues that marginalized people should not have to fully explain or expose themselves in order to be recognized. My photographs embody this principle. They do not over-narrate or translate the people in them. Instead, they preserve presence on its own terms. The individuals I document do not need interpretation through an external gaze to hold meaning. They hold their own power.
Achille Mbembe’s work on archives and memory also informs my practice. Archives are never neutral; they are sites of power that dictate whose stories are remembered and whose are erased. In Their Hands reclaims that power. My images challenge the structures that have long determined which histories are worth preserving. In doing so, they resist what Mbembe calls necropolitics—the systemic disposal of certain lives, cultures, and histories.
But this work is not just about the past; it is about safeguarding the future. In Their Hands is an act of care, resistance, and refusal. It is an archive that does not seek to explain itself but asserts that these people, these stories, and these lives will not be forgotten.
