BLKMAIL.ca

Our Story

BLKMAIL Photography
www.blkmail.ca

Since 1994, Ms. Bailey has been using photography as a medium to document alternative images of Africans on the continent and Diaspora. Toronto-based photographer, Ms. Bailey is a graduate of York University where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and Education degree. She complete a Master of Education at York University, with a focus on community arts-based health research.

Under the mentorship of Master photographer Jack Dales, Ms. Bailey is best known for her unique 35mm non-silver photography film works. This multi-disciplinary practice mines rare and historical photographic techniques by experimenting with hand developed van d**e, cyano type and gum biochromate-printing processes on BFK paper. Her unique layered photographic glassworks are finished with delicate transparent stained glass construction (photographic ortho image suspended between plates of hand frosted and clear glass).

Ms. Bailey interprets her personal observations of her subject’s body image, sexuality, and vulnerability through a post-colonial identity and health equity lens. Her discursive and figural production on the visual representation for non-conforming sexual and gender identities emotionally interrupts the media’s narrow assumptions about Black men and women’s personhood.

Although Ms. Bailey has been working in a digital format for the past 10 years, she utilizes aesthetics of a historical photographic foundation to enhance the final production. Her work is closely connected to her passion for image production of African bodies, as this was her deliberate opportunity to capture memories, validate existence and build self-esteem by allowing her images of subjects to become a political instrument-rewriting representation.