This is Nina Robinson’s Arkansas Family Album Nina is one of...

This is Nina Robinson’s Arkansas Family Album

Nina is one of this year’s recipients of the Getty Images (@gettyimages) Instagram Grant. The grant supports photographers who use Instagram to document stories from underrepresented communities around the world.

Photojournalist Nina Robinson (@ninarobinsonnyc) isn’t one to talk about her feelings at length, but her work documenting her family and African-Americans in rural Arkansas (@arkansasfamilyalbum) is rich in emotion. “This project was never really for the public’s eye, because I’m a very private person,” she says. “It was about me reconnecting with families that I hadn’t seen for over 15 years.” Nina’s work, which aims to “break the visual prejudices of race, class, age and gender,” is motivated in large part by her father — who never wanted to be photographed. But the day before he passed away unexpectedly, he finally allowed Nina to photograph him. This motivated Nina to pursue work that challenges her viewers to shift their visual concepts and narratives. She says, “If we’re not challenging ourselves, we’re not living, we’re not growing.”

by via Instagram Blog