Faces of my Family.

A documentation of my maternal family who have Trichoepithelioma, with Portraiture that allows them (and other people) to see themselves as they are; and also as a way to create awareness about the condition.

‘Faces of my family’ is a personal project I’ve been working on since 2021.

Since 2020, I started on a journey of documenting my family members on my maternal grandmother’s side, most of whom have a condition called trichoepithelioma that presents as small tumors on the face. This project started after my grandmother died at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 before I could get started on a series of portraits of her that I’d planned to take. In a bid to document her legacy, the people she left behind; her family, I started taking photos of them. Another core pillar of this project is the discrimination (and ostracism in some cases) that I’ve watched my family face for their facial features. Trichoepithelioma is a very rare condition and one that most average Nigerians are ignorant about.

This project has evolved to documenting Nigerians living with neurofibromatosis as well, and will continue to evolve.

Originally titled ‘Faces of family’ as the core of where it started, What this project entails now is photographing people, Nigerians with Trichoepithelioma and Neurofibromatosis, using said portraiture to create awareness on these conditions and the lived experiences of those who have them, particularly as a way to mitigate the ignorance of the general public on these conditions.