Untold Voices

Untold Voices began with several vintage family photographs that Chieska Fortune Smith discovered at her family home in Japan.

Born to an African-American soul singer and a Japanese classical dancer, Fortune Smith has carried a sense of not having a solid grounding since her childhood. By collecting the haunting yet enigmatic moments of everyday life and her vintage family photographs which trace back three generations of her family, she evokes a melancholy as fleeting as a mirage, and transforms them into an exploration of her own roots.

”I’ve never really known how to use my voice. When I picked up a camera, I felt like it was the first time I could express myself, my thoughts and my emotions so accurately and honestly. I don’t know if I was consciously aware that the way I was taking photographs and that the images I chose to capture were influenced by my heritage and my roots. Perhaps the family photos I was surrounded by as a child had seeped into my subconscious and flowed out into my lens. In any case, this is my view; this is my world as I see it."