Storyteller “Qiana Mestrich is a photo-based visual artist and writer from Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, her autobiographical work establishes a study of heritage within complex and convoluted visual histories.
She is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography History, a blog which profiles photographers of color. In 2012, Qiana Mestrich co-edited (with fellow ICP-Bard alumna Michi Jigarjian) How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a book about and by contemporary artist mothers.”
Her recent work, “Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care” can be viewed here!
Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care
“Under the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act of 1998, my husband Joseph received photocopied files from the London Borough of Camden documenting the years he spent as an orphan in several children’s homes from 1965 to 1975. Born to a Nigerian father and Irish mother, Joseph remained “in care” under the child protection system in England until 1981.
This series combines select, manipulated text from those documents with my own images of Joseph. Both the photography and text function as character assessments, questioning the inherent misrepresentation of portraiture. The third-party narrative ultimately reveals the social and moral forces that denied Joseph hi birthright to a family, while my photographs show the beginnings of a new one.”