Nona Faustine’s first retrospective, ‘What My Mother Gave Me,’ is on view at the Center for Photography at Woodstock until 10 May 2026. The exhibition gathers nearly three decades of the artist’s work, spanning series such as *Young Mothers*, *Mitochondria*, and *White Shoes*, to explore themes of matrilineal memory, the Black female body, and the afterlives of slavery in urban spaces. Faustine’s photographs range from intimate depictions of young motherhood to defiant nude self-portraits that transform sites of erasure into counter-monuments of presence.
The retrospective matters because it positions Faustine’s practice as a vital intersection of personal archive and political reckoning, insisting that history is embodied and carried through generations of Black women. By collapsing the distance between the intimate and the historical, the exhibition challenges dominant narratives and asserts photography as an act of return—to lineage, memory, and the enduring power of maternal inheritance. It solidifies Faustine’s role as a key contemporary voice in feminist and anti-racist visual culture.