Front Yard
The front yard is as much a metaphor as it is a space. Homes reflect the material successes of their inhabitants, their aesthetic tastes, and concrete the ties that bind family, lovers, and friends. When the time came to a proverbial standstill, I turned to my community to make portraits of people in their front yards and the conversation has since continued.
The slow pace of using both digital and analog large-format cameras, simultaneously, gave me time to reflect on my role as a photographer. I decided to disrupt the usual one-sided gaze so problematic in documentary photography by opening up the process to collaboration. Making large format black and white prints, I invited these families to color or embellish them however they liked.
This set of images inverts the process, where people choose how they want it to be seen. It is a more in-depth conversation of the perceived realities and how easy it is to break barriers of judgment by opening our worlds to each other. While humanity is struggling with wars, isolation, and distrust, perhaps the antidote is in the collaborative sowing of seeds that represent, affirm, and bind us all.
Find out more:
Website: www.ashimayadava.com/
Instagram: @indigonyx
