The project took root in 2021, when she received a commission from the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University to create a new body of work, in response to a collection of 18 family photo albums that chronicle the lives of Black families around the nation between 1860s–1980s.
Blas, who now lives in Atlanta, returned to Ithaca during the summer of 2022 and 2023 to photograph family and friends, crafting scenes that sparkled with the promise of paradise on earth. She then seamlessly weaved archival photographs drawn from her family albums along with those at Cornell throughout, crafting an intimate, intricately layered portrait of Black American family life suffused with mystery, power, poetry, and love.
“The core of my work is my love for people of African descent, and I wanted to use photography to talk about Black culture, Black history, sexuality, women, all of these things, in a poetic way. This world is really hard and heavy, but it’s also beautiful and magical. I think the best photography poses questions; it doesn’t answer them.”
