Big Mama

Big Mama explores young Black motherhood through portraiture and storytelling, highlighting how mothers under 24 navigate youth, identity, and societal judgment while challenging stereotypes and reclaiming grace, strength, and visibility.

Big Mama is a series centered on mothers under twenty-four as they navigate motherhood alongside youth, identity, and societal judgment. Through portraiture and personal storytelling, the project explores how young mothers, particularly within the Black community, are often socially isolated, reduced to stereotypes, or treated as cautionary figures rather than individuals deserving of grace and understanding.

Big Mama considers young motherhood as a kind of cultural island: a lived experience that exists close to society, yet remains emotionally and socially distanced from it. These women occupy fragmented spaces between girlhood and adulthood, freedom and responsibility, visibility and misunderstanding. Their stories reveal how crisis can become a site of transformation, resilience, and new forms of coexistence.

The project began with the image of a young mother holding a child on her hip while carrying a vacuum in her other hand. This visual carried symbolism of care, labor, and youth existing simultaneously. Expanding from this initial vision, Big Mama challenges the notion that motherhood erases youth or possibility. Instead, it presents young mothers as vibrant, multifaceted individuals who continue to grow, dream, and define themselves beyond public perception.

By creating space for these women to speak for themselves, Big Mama seeks to bridge the distance between societal assumption and lived experience. The work invites viewers to confront the ways judgment creates isolation, while imagining new possibilities for empathy, dialogue, and collective care.