American photographer Ayana V. Jackson (b. 1977, New Jersey), a descendant of one of the earliest African families to settle in the northeastern United States, explores the construction of racial and gender identity through photography. Her work critically examines the role of historical imagery, particularly 19th and early 20th century black portraiture, in shaping the Western gaze and reinforcing colonial and white male-dominated narratives. Drawing on archival material and sociological research, Jackson challenges these visual legacies by staging her own body within meticulously composed portraits that function as both re-appropriations and counter-narratives. By reversing the perspective traditionally imposed on the black body, often exoticized, primitivized, or reduced to ethnographic spectacle, Jackson reclaims agency. In her seminal series The Becoming Subject, she disrupts dominant iconographies by embodying a multiplicity of historically silenced identities. Her use of self-portraiture is not merely personal; it is political and transformative. Her own body becomes a site of inquiry, resistance, and representation, in which she simultaneously performs, directs, and captures each image.