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Briana

Zackary Canepari

Briana isn't your average teenage girl.


Briana is the sister of Olympic Gold Medal Boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields and often that’s how she’s defined. Claressa was featured in the documentary "T-Rex" directed by Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper, produced by Sue Jaye Johnson. In that film, Briana says that Claressa is her better half, which would make her the worse half, or at very least the other half. Briana is cut from the same cloth as Claressa - she's tough, charismatic, resilient. Briana is Claressa without the boxing. In a town like Flint, Michigan, you need something to get you out. And Briana doesn’t have that. So she’s stuck in Flint. In another town, all of her strengths might help her rise and get ahead. But she’s not in another town.

The photos are featured in the book REX published by Contrasto. The film was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and published on CNN's Great Big Story.

"T-Rex" is currently available on Vimeo and iTunes.

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© Zackary Canepari
Briana Shields, 18
© Zackary Canepari
Briana Shields (in the back), 18, holds her little boy Fatdaddy (real name Bradford) in her bedroom in The Villa, a housing complex in North Flint. Briana's cousin Coco and Coco's little girl Lani are also pictured. Briana and Fatdaddy only lived there for about 6 months before they had to move back in with Briana's mom. At the time this photo was taken, Fatdaddy's father was in prison.
© Zackary Canepari
Briana, 19, walks to a meeting at Job Corp, hoping to get into the local training program in Flint.
© Zackary Canepari
A party store in Flint on a foggy morning.
© Zackary Canepari
Briana, 19, is living with her son, her mom and her teenage brother and his newborn kid in a house in North Flint.
© Zackary Canepari
Fatdaddy looks out the window of his grandmother's house in Flint. The windows are plastic because the house next door was burnt down during Halloween and the heat destroyed the windows on the house of the grandmother.
© Zackary Canepari
Briana Shields, 18, is the younger sister of Olympic Boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields. Claressa and Briana are very close but Briana never found an outlet like boxing. While Claressa trains for her second Olympic Gold medal, Briana has dropped out of school and is raising her 2 year-old boy Fatdaddy. His real name is Bradford but no one calls him that.
© Zackary Canepari
Claressa Shields, 20, takes a goodbye selfie with her young sister Briana, 18. Claressa is moving from her hometown to Colorado, the first time she has ever lived outside of Flint.
© Zackary Canepari
Flint, Michigan from a dirty plane window.
© Zackary Canepari
Briana Shields, 18, shadowboxes with her son Fatdaddy in a hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. Briana was out of Flint for the first time in her life watching her sister, Olympic Gold Medal Boxer Claressa "T-Rex" Shields compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials.
© Zackary Canepari
Briana Shields, 15. This was one of the first night I hung out with Briana. Her sister was in the car and the two of them wrestled in the grass for 30 minutes.
© Zackary Canepari
Brianna Shields, 17, and her baby "Fatdaddy" at the apartment they share with her mother and brother.
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Zackary Canepari

Zackary Canepari

Zack Canepari is an independent photographer and filmmaker specializing in documentary and editorial projects. He studied photography in Paris at the SPEOS Photographic Institute and later entered the Masters Program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

His photographic career began in 2003 shooting portraiture for American culture magazines like XLR8R, RIDES, and SF Guardian, and he has since worked for The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, TIME Magazine and The Chicago Tribune in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mexico, China, Eastern Europe, and Nigeria.

In 2009, Zack and filmmaker Drea Cooper created California is a Place, a series of short documentaries about the state, which featured as part of the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontiers section and was nominated for the IDFA DocLab award for Digital Storytelling.


  • Previous Gallery Everybody Need Good Neighbours
    Previous
  • Next Gallery Days of Melancholy
    Next
  • Menu
  • Exhibition Home
  • Change Gallery
    • Chocolate on my Jeans
      Nicolas Wormull
    • What Remains
      Sarker Protick
    • La Casa Que Sangra
      Yael Martínez
    • The Flowers Family
      Cecilia Reynoso
    • Underland
      Tamara Merino Bloch
    • Everybody Need Good Neighbours
      Arnau Blanch Vilageliu
    • Days of Melancholy
      Tatiana Vinogradova
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    Nicolas Wormull
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    Sarker Protick
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    Yael Martínez
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    Tamara Merino Bloch
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    Arnau Blanch Vilageliu
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    Tatiana Vinogradova
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