Either I stare directly into the camera in these domestic scenes, or I look away, allowing myself to be viewed by the audience without being objectified. The camera's common purpose has been to objectify, capture, or put on display; it defines what the self is, and historically, photographers have used the camera to objectify black bodies and display them. As a black queer individual, historically, my body has been placed on a pedestal, as something for display or to be examined. So by taking control of the camera and looking away, I steal back the display and pedestal, the objectification forced upon me and many like me, and by staring into the camera, I confront those viewing me, creating a palpable tension.

Within this gaze, I am speaking directly of my residence in Logan Square, Chicago; I arrived here from South Central Los Angeles, a neighborhood shaped by black and brown communities, yet so often reduced to a narrative of danger and disorder. I left as gentrification began to unravel the fabric of this space, pushing people out, rewriting its story. Now, I find myself in another space already transformed and stripped of much of its history. Logan Square stands as a mirror of what I left behind, its past barely visible, lingering only in fragments.

The gaze captures the affective experience of racial isolation within spaces once populated by bodies that mirrored my own. There’s a notable tenseness of being watched, judged, and “othered,” the paranoia of living in a space where the self feels ghostly, as if constantly scrutinized. This condition of hypervisibility extends beyond the self to the disciplinary scrutiny imposed upon the Black body, and, more specifically, the Black queer body continually mediated through external frameworks of judgment and control. These images, while photos of myself, are not self-expression; however, they are platforms for concepts, where I take liberties with myself. If the system wishes to define how I represent, I will create an already outlined and defined image of the self, while removing the self from the conversation.