FOR A WHILE, I FORGOT WHY I WAS HERE

"For a While... is a collection of photography, poems, music playlists, and mementos captured between 2020-2025. It details events of my life as a student, artist, Black person, and a young adult growing up and finding my purpose throughout my travels, community, and solitude. My photography has a candid nature to it, where anyone can find emotional resonance with the images.

The title refers to the concept of living life on "autopilot", where we practice a certain lifestyle or set of actions for so long that we begin to forget the importance of the act. This is how I felt as a student and artist living in the DMV. The friendships I made, relationships I've built, and the art I created made me feel like the days I lived would last forever. However, the whole point of college (and almost everything in life for that matter) is for it to end and something new to take its place. It's this type of irony that For a While... is built on. My relationship with time is reflected in the pages of the book. Pages will span from 2021 to 2025 and then back to 2023. The book, like my memory, is nonlinear and fragmented. When we remember, we don't follow a calendar, we chase a feeling.

For a While, I Forgot Why I Was Here is a physical manifestation of my desire to chase fleeting time."