PROJECT: YES! Magazine features
As a visual storyteller, I use images to accompany the narrative and heighten its emotional resonance. My goal is to underscore moments of urgency, reveal nuance, and evoke a feeling that lingers after the final sentence. I choose collage, illustration, or layered photography to deepen complex narratives—each serving as a parallel layer of storytelling.
For the Endings issue cover, I aimed to convey that endings aren’t always final—they can create space for new possibilities and potential. The opening image for the “Imposition of Black Grief” feature captured the emotional weight of the loss of life that disproportionately impacted Black communities during the pandemic shutdown. Supporting visuals surfaced the profound, ongoing losses from police violence and racially motivated mass shootings.
In the same issue, the feature “Could We End Wealth?” called for collage—offering a more nuanced visual language to reflect the story’s complexity. For features like this, I also chart critical data, highlight pull quotes, and incorporate text-based graphics to guide readers through key takeaways.
The Growth cover was entirely my own composition—combining three stock images and a still from a video, which I later repurposed into a “cover reveal” animation for Instagram. I also pitched the lead feature, “The Growing Pains of a Changing Nation.” My concept was that the U.S., as an ongoing experiment, is in a kind of adolescence: emotionally volatile, exploring its identity, and struggling to define who it wants to become—what I described as the “growing pains of America.”
For this feature, I selected a lead image that served as a visual reminder of the magnitude of what occurred on January 6, at a time when national memory was beginning to fade. The story expanded beyond that moment to include images of Confederate monuments being dismantled, demographic shifts, immigration, and the “browning of America,” and congressional consequences faced by those taking a stand against gun violence—each visual marking a chapter in the nation’s coming-of-age.
The Truth issue’s cover featured a portrait commissioned from Lakán Angelo Ragaza. It explored truth as the tension between how we see ourselves, how we choose to present ourselves, and how we are seen by others. The image honored the courage of a trans woman living her truth—authentically and unapologetically.
The lead feature, “Truth and Reckoning,” addressed the generational harm caused by Native boarding schools dating back to the early 1800s. I focused on showing the deplorable conditions, the beginnings of reconciliation, and efforts to return children’s remains found in mass graves. The visual language needed to hold space for grief, truth, and the long arc of healing.
