ABDUL AZIZ
A Maddening Perception of a 15-year-old. 2023, Archival pigment print.
Creatively interprets the experience of Deon Tae:
“Me playing my game, playing Madden or something, or playing basketball on my game or something like that...It really takes a lot of stuff off of my mind.”
For nearly two decades, I have documented social issues, conflict, and war with my camera, to tell stories of marginalized voices. Only recently have I considered myself an “artist,” as the primary goal of my work has been to raise awareness and improve the human condition. Photography has been the tool I have used to capture and convey emotion, pain, destruction, and beauty. With the advent of the rapidly developing technological marvel of Artificial Intelligence, lines begin to blur between reality and fiction. Our ability to perceive what is real is quickly shifting!
Just as our perceptions of reality can be altered by new information, so can the reality we create for others. During my time as Communications Director at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, I understood the importance of creating narratives highlighting the humanity of children involved in the Juvenile Justice System. We often forget the mistakes of our childhood. We elevate ourselves above those who have made life-altering decisions. Understanding that the Juvenile Justice System was specifically designed to be rehabilitative is key to understanding that juvenile offenders are indeed children, even when they make adult-sized mistakes.
This work merges my passion for photography, technology, and Juvenile Justice Advocacy. It was created using digital photography as a base. I then fed prompts into Artificial Intelligence that were taken directly from an interview conducted with a young man who is determined to find himself on the right track. A Maddening Perception of a 15-year-old challenges the idea that children are disposable or irredeemable. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I hope that this piece resonates with the viewer to counter such perceptions.
Abdul Aziz (b. 1978, New Orleans, LA; based in New Orleans, LA) is an artist and media designer best known for his work as a photojour-nalist and documentary filmmaker. Early in his career, he served as a Communications Director for the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (2006–2009) and a board member of LCCR (2013–2017). Aziz has chronicled human conflict and urgent social issues in the Middle East and Africa to the far reaches of the Himalayas and US for over two decades. His most recent work focused on the rise of American white nationalism and the Black Lives Matter movement has been widely circulated by leading new agencies such as The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and NPR. In 2021, Aziz was recognized for capturing Louisiana’s history, culture, and peoples with the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Documentary Photographer of the Year Award. He studied at Loyola University.