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I am a photographer, a wannabe author, a former journalist, a lover of music, and most importantly, my daughter’s mother. My daughter, born of mixed race, has been the biggest blessing in my life for the past ten years.  She came into this world half Caucasian and half African American, and turned my world upside down.  She is artistic, dramatic, smart, beautiful and, let my boyfriend tell it–spoiled.

I always thought I would raise my children in the very ethnically-diverse Pacific Northwest, where I’m from.  Alas, I landed in Denver with a biracial child and have been stuck in what I consider to be a very un-diverse city. I have struggled trying to find my place in Denver, and have watched my daughter struggle as well.
I decided to enroll my daughter in a private school and I picked the one that I thought would fit her learning style the best, but I also took into careful consideration the diversity of the school.  At the time I enrolled her I thought I was getting the best of both worlds; fairly diverse school and what seemed like would be a good fit for her learning style.

Slowly but surely, over the last five years, the diversity at her school has dwindled. Now she is one of only a handful of non-Caucasian children.  Even in her first year at the school, she voiced her concerns to me.  One night during a midnight conversation she asked me, (paraphrasing) “Mom, Janey has silky smooth hair, and Suzie has soft curly hair.  Janey’s skin is creamy, and Suzie’s skin is so pretty and tan.  My hair is crazy and curly, and my skin is so ugly.  Why do I have to look like this, why am I all mixed up?”  I can’t remember the exact words any longer, except for the very last line: “Why did I have to be born all mixed up?”

I started looking for books created especially for biracial children and found nothing.  So I decided to create my own book, dedicated to my daughter, to show her all the different types of people in the world who are biracial.

For the past four years I have been interviewing, and photography families who have biological biracial children.  I have photographed children and their families in Denver and Los Angeles, and plan to continue to photograph across the United States.  The goal for my project is to show all kinds of biracial children, and I have succeeded thus far to get a fairly diverse range — Arabic and Caucasian, Asian and Caucasian, African American and Hispanic, and more.
I call this the “Other Project” because until quite recently there wasn’t an option on demographic forms for parents to check “more than one race,” and even now this option is often not available and we are stuck checking the box titled “Other.”

I am seeking families with biracial children to be interviewed and photographed, and I am willing to travel.  People interested in putting together photo sessions in their cities, where they could rally up enough families for a day or two of sessions, please feel free to contact me.

In the long run, this project will help all of our children see that not only are they not all mixed up, they are not alone.  Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for your support of this project.

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