The “2020_Archives (Series)” is a body of art that documents social, political, and economic events throughout New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, and Leipzig, Germany, in the year 2020. I took some of the photographs during my visit to New Orleans at the start of the corona pandemic in the United States. In contrast, I took other photographs upon my arrival back in Leipzig.

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As a native of New Orleans, I took the time to photograph how the pandemic started to affect certain people and businesses as I ventured throughout the city. Once I arrived back in Germany, I documented the social response to the coronavirus pandemic in Leipzig. Coincidentally, most people started to react to the political injustice in the United States in response to the killing of George Floyd. Upon my arrival, I began to witness and photograph a massive Black Lives Matter demonstration in the city center of Leipzig.

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The more I continued to photograph these events, the more I started to self-reflect on responding to these political and social changes. And as an African-American man, I’m deeply affected by both the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality. Consequently, I started to create self-portraits that depict my public identity. 

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This project was funded by 

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