The act of gathering and preserving vernacular images - holding value for them - amplifies the importance of the medium of photography especially considering contemporary modes of representation, and the multidimensionality of Black identity. To embrace these captured moments, as feminist theorist bell hooks acknowledges, renders them less fleeting. What may come across as a simple gesture is at once political, social, and cultural. 

When extracted from their original contexts these images lend themselves to discussions around public and private histories, and the aestheticized family album. In the early 1980s French philosopher, Roland Barthes explored the complex and layered relationships that emerge when quantifying images of past generations; a childlike curiosity emerges as we are acquainted with unfamiliar versions of our caretakers and loved ones. In her essay, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life” (1995) hooks elaborates on an intimate interaction with an old image of her father with which she extends the discussion to the Black community, linking photographs to a broader cultural exchange. Both Barthes and hooks acknowledge and situate photography pertinent to the conversation of being and becoming. Like hooks, Jorian Charlton mediates images from her own father’s youth - from his “glory” - as they relate to gestures of her own interactions, and her own becoming.