Nona Faustine

[1] She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY and The International Center of Photography at Bard College MFA program.

[6] However, at a young age Faustine struggled to find herself in the histories of photography she encountered, which focused on photographers who were disproportionately male and white.

Influenced by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, Faustine began the series as her thesis project in 2012 and continued to add to it over the subsequent three years.

[6] In the ongoing series "Mitochondria", Faustine photographs herself, her mother, her sister, and her daughter in their shared home in Brooklyn, NY.

The New York Times[7] observed that the series is "a celebration of the power of African American women to nurture family, even in the direst circumstances.

The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz wrote, "Faustine's photos serve to mark the places that belong to a history too often hidden from view, whether by design, or neglect, or the ever-frenetic pace of change inherent to life in New York.

The Village Voice wrote that her work was "a frank rendering of America's disgraceful and all-too-buried legacy of marginalization" and explained the impact of the monument photographs: "the graphic interruption stands for the scores of mistreated Americans for whom such structures and their supposed representation of the common good have remained inaccessible"[11] White Shoes, Nona Faustine et al., Mack - 2021