Activating Photography: Creative Affirmation Portraiture

In early March our team hosted a portrait workshop during the opening weekend of Assata Goff’s exhibition, I am an Ancestor Too. In alignment with Goff’s desire to affirm self-love and self-defined beauty, this Encounter the Arts workshop showed participants how portraiture can be used as a tool for self-affirmation. We asked participants to first answer the question, “When are you your most free & creative self?” Participants were invited to answer this question through writing and illustrating an affirmation statement. Our resident photographer and director of Artist Training, Madylin Nixon-Taplet, then worked with the partipants to capture the embodiment of their affirmation in a portrait. As photography offers a way to capture a moment in time, we wanted their images to serve as a reminder of their most fearless, freest, and safest self.

Special thanks to The ArtsCenter at Carrboro for hosting us and Assata for the invitation! Find out more about our Encounter the Arts Workshops, including how you can be a program site, here.

Photography by Madylin Nixon-Taplet.