Sorrow was in my mother’s bones long before my father asked her for a divorce.  She often recounted the story of her grandmother, Ida Mae Brown, who left Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1909 after Ida Mae’s brother killed her husband. Homeless, she fled to St. Louis with her five children, the eldest being my mother’s father. Without resources to care for them, Ida Mae gave her children over to the orphanage.  Imagining her father’s pain, Mom would end her story with a quiet refrain: “At least I have you boys.”

Piecing together what was torn apart is at the heart of Rituals of Belonging. I returned to Louisiana to explore this legacy from 1991 to 2025—my own search through crowds, chasing connection amid the blur of Mardi Gras, where everyone looks like my cousin.  Early on, I captured grids on film from St. Charles to St. Ann streets; later, digital allowed me to compose more fluidly as I wandered the Bywater and Marigny.

A sequence of photos often starts with: “Aw y’all together?”  Then there’s a wink, a nod, and we begin to play while snapping fragments of images from head to toe. Each moment framed is a small offering to our family left behind.

Back home in California, I weave these shards of memory into a kaleidoscopic experience, trying to understand what I’ve not seen before.  These are the threads of light I use to stitch together our rituals of belonging.