In 2017, Jorian Charlton was given a collection of hundreds of vintage 35mm slides from her father for safe-keeping and preservation. The images reflect his time spent in Jamaica, Toronto, and New York between the late 1970s to the late 80s and offer a window into Charlton’s family lineage across culture, land, and people.

Out of Many pairs Charlton’s photographic practice alongside her father’s images, creating an intergenerational dialogue that explores the aestheticized family album in a contemporary context. The online ‘Living Room’ presents these unique slide images. As objects, the vintage slides present an opportunity to anchor ourselves into histories of vernacular images representing Black life and acknowledge the importance of this gesture. The exhibition reframes diasporic narratives and the fluidity of the immigration story to reflect on intersections between public and private histories.

While her father’s slides present familiar representations of home, freedom, and agency, Charlton visualizes new ways of storytelling with a unique set of visual references around black aesthetics and Jamaican-Canadian identity. She uses both digital and analogue photography to create spaces in which her muses embody personal freedoms through fashion, beauty, and trust. Together, her images and her father’s slides create a tangible archive of what was, what is, and what will become - one, out of many. 

It is through her own lens that Charlton visualizes a contemporary way of storytelling. She is creating space for personal stories to be told. She is creating images of people to truly be seen. As her muses exist beyond a still frame and embody personal freedoms and desires, Charlton’s photographs too, are not frozen in time - they, like her father’s slide images, reflect ongoing histories of many times and many people.