Jamil Baldwin

Where Jamil Baldwin was born and where he has called home are only miles away, but feel like lifetimes apart. ​ Most days are spent with his relatives and friends and interrogating the space between them called family; pondering the implications of being from a place; and if those have anything to do with something bigger than himself—specifically, how does one exist as both individual and collective history. There’s a fascination with how places that are persistently changing can also act as one of the permanent ties to index and ground one’s identity. ​ While writing is his primary mode of expression, it informs his more public photography practice. His last series of images, Fieldnotes on How Roots Flourish Without Soil, was featured at the Belfast Photo Festival, included in the Summer of Something Special annual publication and the JRNL monthly photo journal, and exhibited at the Lagos Photo Festival. When exhibited, Fieldnotes is accompanied by poetry and notebook excerpts in lieu of captions. He was recently named an inaugural Google Image Equity Fellow, and will be focused on actualizing the various dimensions for Fieldnotes on How Roots Flourish without Soil. ​ Separately, he co-founded LocallyGrownTV, a radically-centered digital TV initiative that reimagines TV from before for the now, as a way to reclaim imagery and representation. It was featured in WIRED magazine and mentioned in The New Yorker.