ANCESTRY invites viewers into a layered world where memory, mysticism, and maternal love shape the path to self-discovery. Set against both constructed and natural landscapes, the photographs offer visual poems about becoming. At its center is the mother: a powerful, guiding force who holds space for her son’s evolution. Tasked with caring for others while protecting her own, she becomes a bridge - between past and present, between body and spirit.
Through the mother’s presence, the son learns to see himself not just through skin but through soul. To listen inward. To remember. To bloom.
Known for his emotionally rich portraiture and ritual-based art practice, Brandon Thomas Brown turns the lens inward in this new series, a photographic meditation on identity, spirit, and ancestry. Starring model-muses Catherine Aluoch Ojode, Shacar, and Dakaibo, the exhibition is an intimate narrative drawn from the artist’s own life. At its center is the mother: a powerful, guiding force who holds space for her son’s evolution. Tasked with caring for others while protecting her own, she becomes a bridge - between past and present, between body and spirit.
Brown's passion for photography was ignited by his grandfather, who documented his experiences during the Vietnam War and went on to create indelible images after his return home. These pictures later found their way to Brown and inspired him to pursue photography. Today he works as a successful commercial photographer and as an interdisciplinary artist exploring the myriad possibilities of photography, cyanotype, photo montage and collage.
