Growing up between Austin, Texas, and Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma, photographer Rahim Fortune recalls, “I have been exposed to the destruction of culture firsthand. In Austin, with gentrification, and in Oklahoma, with corporations taking native land.” It’s through these experiences that he’s laid the foundations of his creative legacy. “I work to find the beauty in everyday life while leaving space for and honouring the hardships many of us face,” he explains.

As a member of the Chickasaw Indian Nation tribe, Fortune has been documenting the community closest to him since 2016 through striking black and white portraiture of its older and younger generations dressed in intertribal regalia. “I began making documentary photographs as a way of understanding what is happening in regards to racial inequality and economic disparity,” he says. “I strive to create work that will allow others to learn and heal.”

Fortune hopes to win the Dazed 100 to help with the publishing fees of his debut monograph, Oklahoma – “A body of work that has never been produced from this geographic region,” he says – which would be donated to a number of public libraries in the Chickasaw Nation, where the series was made.

When it comes to your work, what are you most proud of? 

Rahim Fortune: I'm very proud of all of the work I have done around family dynamics in black and native communities. My proudest moment was having a show at MoMA PS1 in 2018. The show displayed photographs of Indigenous folks wearing intertribal regalia at a native gathering on the Shinnecock reservation.

What or who gives you hope and why? 

Rahim Fortune: Working with the future generation of artists and thinkers gives me hope. We are in a moment where the voices of people of colour, women, and queer artists are able to be amplified like never before. Seeing fresh work created in the American South is something that constantly gives me hope.

“I began making documentary photographs as a way of understanding what is happening in regards to racial inequality and economic disparity. I strive to create work that will allow others to learn and heal” – Rahim Fortune

What creative or philanthropic project would you work on with a grant from the Dazed 100 Ideas Fund?

Rahim Fortune: This grant would help me complete the sequencing and publishing of my first monograph, Oklahoma. This book is a collection of photographs and essays created over three years, of me returning to my family's native land. It's a body of work that has never been produced from this geographic region.