Untold Voices - Chieska Fortune Smith

“A sense of identity” rather than “identity”.

Untold Voices began with several vintage family photographs that Chieska Fortune Smith discovered at her family home in Japan.

Born to an African-American soul singer and a Japanese classical dancer, Fortune Smith has carried a sense of not having a solid grounding since her childhood. By collecting the haunting yet enigmatic moments of everyday life and her vintage family photographs which trace back three generations of her family, she evokes a melancholy as fleeting as a mirage, and transforms them into an exploration of her own roots.

”I’ve never really known how to use my voice. When I picked up a camera, I felt like it was the first time I could express myself, my thoughts and my emotions so accurately and honestly. I don’t know if I was consciously aware that the way I was taking photographs and that the images I chose to capture were influenced by my heritage and my roots. Perhaps the family photos I was surrounded by as a child had seeped into my subconscious and flowed out into my lens. In any case, this is my view; this is my world as I see it."

First edition of 700 copies.

Cairo Apartment, 2026 
Hardcover, 96pp 
265 x 205mm