Ayana V. Jackson, born in 1977 in East Orange, NJ, lives and works between Johannesburg, RSA and Brooklyn, NY. Jackson uses  her lens to deconstruct the history of portraiture, she questions photography's role in perpetuating stratified identities. Her practice maps the ethical considerations and relationships between the photographer, subject and viewer, in turn exploring themes around race, gender and reproduction. Her work examines myths of the Black Diaspora and re-stages archival images as a mean to liberate the Black body. Her work is collected by institutions including  Smithsonian NMAFA (DC), The Studio Museum in Harlem (NY),, The Newark Museum (NJ), The JP Chase Morgan collection, Princeton University Art Museum (NJ), the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia), The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, WA). Jackson was a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow for Photography (NY), and the recipient of the 2018 Smithsonian Fellowship (Washington D.C).