“Birds Flying High” (2021) | Leica Gallery Boston x AYRP

Lynn Aurélie, Birds Flying High…, Digital Photograph, 2021

This self-portrait is part of Birds Flying High, an ongoing body of work in which I use self-portraiture to process collective grief and political unrest both in the US and in my home country of Haiti.

The ratification of the 19th Amendment is often celebrated as a clean victory, but the history is far more complicated than that. The 19th Amendment gave most women a voice… not all women. Not Black women, not Native American women, not other women of color, and certainly not immigrant women.

As a Haitian immigrant who has lived in this country for 16 years, I technically benefit from the amendment as a woman, but I still don’t have the right to vote due to my immigration status. I have built a life here, contributed here, paid taxes here, poured into my community here. And yet I cannot vote. The most basic and powerful civic act- the ability to appoint someone to speak for me, for people like me- remains out of my reach.

This image is my perspective. My presence. My body taking up space here and my voice in the room speaking on access, visibility, and agency.