Half a year ago, during a Christmas when the window panes were frosted with family retribution which refused to diffuse to resolution, during a Christmas when the inversion of a pronoun meant aversion to the gospel, during a Christmas when green and red were swallowed up by BLACK and WHITE, she gave me a gift.

It was a Canon Rebel XS.

Since then, I have taken pictures by the hundreds. My left hand thumb has grown arthritic from fingering the trash can icon by the thousands. Sometimes, too, I'll get around people who go by the name "photographers" and I'll know. I'll just know they are, what do you say, of a professional caliber? Because they'll talk about F stops and white balance and exposure compensation. And while I'll smile and nod, I'm really wondering what the hell cursing, segregation, and prostitution have to do with photography. All this to say: I'm learning that knowing terms might in fact be of great importance here. And not just a surface, lackadaisical knowledge but the specific, committed-to-memory kind. Like knowing that a shutter speed of 1/15 or slower will blur the motion of water. Like knowing a high ISO should be avoided like the plague. Because the art and the stories and the questions behind quality pictures have some adhered to techniques and mathematical equations.

But techniques and math aside, I want to bring immortality to details--constant variables-- and mortality to people--very fluctuating variables. I want to celebrate the power of simplicity in a culture which is anything but simple. I want to take photographs that bring chills...and not always the good kind. The necessary kind, the kind that wakes us up from apathy. I want to take photographs that threaten to end the victimization and persecution of ONE PERSPECTIVE.