Anju Lukose-Scott is a photographer based in New York City. She photographs to document her life, the city, and the people in it. With her photography, she explores ideas about identity, self, and body.

I use photography to process my thoughts and emotions and to reflect on the world around me. Before I begin photographing, I come up with a concept that all of the photos are connected to. This helps me to create a cohesive narrative through my photographs and bodies of work that flow. My photography helps me make sense of things I struggle with, like my distant connection to my family in India and how we relate to each other despite a language barrier. When I went to India and visited family I barely remembered and who spoke no English, I found that my photography helped us understand each other — images alone don’t have a language. I gained an appreciation for my culture and a sense of community I did not have before. Lately, through my photographs, I have been exploring my relationship with my Black family and my own identity as a Black person. Though I have so many things that connect me to my Jamaican heritage, I still feel removed from it because of how little I resemble my father’s side of the family. I use frame in my photographs about Blackness to focus on one message, meaning, or symbol for my identity. For example, instead of including my entire body in a photograph, I might just include the part with writing, or the most expressive part of the photograph. I use this to limit distraction and make my photographs as interesting, unusual, and concise as possible. I am inspired by Latoya Ruby Frazier, Andre D. Wagner, and Catherine Opie, and the way they use storytelling in their photographs, and Micaiah Carter and Myles Loftin’s use of bold color and texture to create interesting images. I am also constantly inspired by my peers and friends who are photographers and artists and how they approach the same world I do. I take inspiration from these photographers and their art and apply it to my own work: I am constantly pushing myself to make my photographs more focused, striking, streamlined, and personal.