We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Deandra Lee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Deandra below.

Hi Deandra, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The last semester of my senior year in high school , I wanted to pursue a career as an artist. I took up photography at a very young age. Capturing anything, including nature and my dolls. Being part of a new visual area that I was unaware of was both thrilling and eye-opening. I enjoyed creating, learning new things, and sharing my wonder in the world, therefore I was doing this for pleasure. I was unaware that I could pursue a career in photography. When I sat down with my mother during the final semester of high school, she looked at my work and suggested that I could really do something with it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a surrealist self-portrait photographer. Surrealism is something that always excites me creatively. Creating spaces that produce different forms of perspectives and dreamlike wonder is exciting and interesting.
Before my work was more dreamlike aesthetic with expressing my questions I had wondered about from a young age.
Recently, as of last year, my work truly shifted into a place where I can connect and create with my experiences and history of being a black woman in America. Being able to truly think about my status as an American with history from the roots of its being really pushed my continuation of creating this type of work. Work that allows people to flow through and ask themselves questions of what they see.
I’m truly proud, with help from friends and professors that help me get to this point in my artistry.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The rewarding part is always creating something you want to create. I would be a different artist if I didn’t like the process of creating my work.
I was always excited to experiment and wonder what I was use in an image to convey my thoughts.
Being an artist is fulfilling for me because getting to continue to know who I am and the challenges (that weren’t set by me) that comes with living as who I am to then create work about that and how it relates to others in my community is rewarding.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

What’s driving me is my responsibility and being a witness.
In recent times there continues to be erasure at the hands with power and control. Everything that was created, built and operated with the lives of Black people is disappearing.
I’m witnessing this collapse in the modern day age where things are supposed to be more involved and important. It’s my responsibility to not forget and make sure others don’t forget of the history they desperately want to destroy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.deandraleeart.org/

Image Credits

Deandra Lee