Rosie was born in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina, and moved to Northern New Jersey around 2010. She is currently a student at Columbia High School, and a martial arts student at New Jersey Tae Kwon Do, the local studio. She is a creative, unconventional, adventurous, drama queen who loves everything pink, still sleeps with stuffed animals, drinks lots of apple juice, and occasionally makes bad decisions. The camera offered her a new eye and gave her a way to put herself in the world, establishing who she is and what she values.
Home doesn’t have to be a house, or even a building. Home could be an emotion, a feeling, a person, an animal, an entire state, or one specific location. For me, I find home in my green blanket, in my mother, in the lake house and the ranch in Texas, in the way my best friend looks when she’s sleeping, in my martial arts studio, in the coffee shop in town, in the sun on my face, and in that really specific feeling I get skating down Springfield Avenue on a mid July afternoon, some mix of nostalgia, euphoria, and intense sadness. I chose to photograph portraits of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, inside the studio and out, and engage them in a conversation about what home really means to them, and include images of what my concept of home is.