I am a documentary photographer on the staff of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit human rights reporting organization on the South Side of Chicago. For as long as I can remember, I've been outward bound, more interested in exploring other people's worlds than my own. After years of travel and physical adventures, I picked up a camera and found my vocation.

For more than a decade, I documented the “transformation” of high-rise public housing in Chicago, as whole communities were demolished and residents were relocated. Concurrently, I photographed the construction of Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. Taken together, these two bodies of work sketch a portrait of a city at a particular moment in its history.

As a survivor of sexual assault, a major focus of my work has been life after violence. Working with the Voices and Faces Project, I have done portraits of rape survivors in this country and abroad. An installation on sexual assault, composed of twenty-five images, is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography. And I produced an artist’s book, “Into the Light”, based on the photos of the women I met during The Voices and Faces Project work.

For over a decade, I documented the Youth/Police Project based in Hyde Park Academy, a predominantly black high school in Chicago.  Inside and outside of the classroom a team from the Invisible Institute worked with juniors and seniors in a media class.  Our goal was to learn through role plays and interviews how their everyday interactions with the police affected their lives.  

Other projects include a photo series on Roma families in France; an essay on mothers and daughters; and a study of storefront churches on the South Side of Chicago. 

My work has been widely exhibited and has appeared in a variety of publications, including Harper’s Magazine, Triquarterly, Chicago Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, and NPR.