While We’re Here / While I Have You is an ongoing photo project following the daily, multifaceted lives of Haitian people in Canarsie and East Flatbush. For these parts of Brooklyn I call home, immigrants, especially Haitians who make up a large part of these areas, are being threatened and living in fear. There’s so much being said about the trouble they bring or live through, and as a child of Haitian immigrants, I want to focus on the other side. I want to make images that show the humanity within us – what brings us joy and peace – with the greater hope that others who fear us will see it too. I cannot stop a new administration’s laws, but I can document my home as I have it now, even if minds don’t change. I can just make work for us and build an archive that shows how we stayed, no matter all that was done to throw us into oblivion.
