Through Her Lens: Caribbean Image Makers

Sonia Báez-Hernández is a Puerto-Dominican interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator whose work spans photography, performance, film, installation, poetry, and soft sculpture. Born in Santo Domingo and raised between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico during a period of political unrest, her practice is shaped by migration, diaspora, and the social realities of the Caribbean. Báez-Hernández explores the body, illness, care, and human rights through research-based and socially engaged projects. She holds a BA from the University of Puerto Rico, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MA in Sociology from UCLA. Her documentary project Territories of the Breast received the Spirit Award at the Reels Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival in New York.

Finding spirit, humanity, and meaning through global documentary journeys. Brenda Lee Hernández Díaz is a Puerto Rican photographer based in Chicago whose work explores everyday life, memory, and the emotional resonance of place. She began photographing in Puerto Rico and later developed her practice through travel across Europe, South America, and multiple U.S. cities. Since 2018, her work has increasingly focused on the human, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of experience, shaped by periods of reflection and travel in India, Mexico, France, and Canada. Hernández Díaz approaches photography as a way to remain present and attentive to fleeting moments. In recent years, her practice has expanded into conceptually driven projects that incorporate mixed media, multimedia processes, and archival materials, reflecting an evolving interest in experimentation and visual storytelling.

Documenting culture, ritual, and resilience within everyday Black life. Lisa DuBois is a New York–based ethnographic photojournalist and curator whose work documents cultural expression, ritual, and everyday life within marginalized communities. Her practice focuses on subcultures within mainstream society, exploring how identity, resilience, and belonging are expressed through tradition, fashion, music, and collective gathering. DuBois is known for her long-term engagement with Black communities in New Orleans and for projects in Harlem that position public space as a site of healing and memory. In 2020, Community Works NYC recognized her contributions to Harlem’s cultural life during the COVID-19 pandemic through a large-scale outdoor exhibition. Her work has been exhibited at the Gordon Parks Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and internationally.

Intimate portraiture rooted in Black identity, care, and collaborative storytelling. Qurissy is a Chicago-based photographer and artist whose work centers Black identity, archive, and lineage. Raised on the West Side, her practice is shaped by family history, memory work, and community storytelling. She approaches photography as a relational process grounded in trust and collaboration, with recurring themes of care, culture, and inheritance. In 2025, she participated in the Black Magic Rodeo Residency in Tulsa, producing a photographic series exploring cowboy history, place, and memory. In 2023, she was a resident at the Getty Center with the Black Image Center, where she created For My Younger Self, a collage-based work on grief and lineage. Qurissy is also the creator of Photographer Life Check, a podcast documenting Black women image makers and their creative lives.

Precision-driven photography connecting research, archives, and visual narrative. Tameshia Glass is a photographer whose work combines technical precision with narrative-driven storytelling. Trained in studio and documentary photography, her practice spans editorial, lifestyle, and research-based projects, with a strong focus on lighting, composition, and color-accurate production. Her work is shaped by cultural research and lived experience, including studies in Italy where she documented historical and cultural sites. She later worked as a photojournalism intern at the Los Angeles Times, producing photo essays in editorial settings. Glass’s work has been published in the Legacy academic journal, and she has contributed to the History Chapters podcast. She also develops exhibitions that integrate archival research and photography, using visual storytelling to present complex histories in accessible ways.

Interrogating Caribbean identity, landscape, and power through a diasporic lens. Alexandra Majerus is a multidisciplinary, lens-based artist whose work explores Caribbean identity through diasporic and transcultural perspectives. With ancestral ties across multiple Anglo-Caribbean islands, she has lived between Barbados and Canada, spent time in France, and maintains ongoing engagement with Cuba and the wider Caribbean. Her practice examines power, representation, and landscape within postcolonial and neo-colonial contexts, often addressing tourism and the tension between the Caribbean as “paradise” and its lived realities. Majerus draws on Caribbean critical theory and personal history to explore migration, family, class, and loss. She holds an MFA from OCAD University and has exhibited internationally. She is Director of Unpack Studio Art Projects & Havana Residency, supporting artistic exchange across the Caribbean diaspora.