Every strand holds a story.
“Just Like My Own,” a newly released photo magazine aiming to bring back “print media,” focuses on the evolution and variation of African/minority diasporic roots in NYC. The event was one of a kind, and, more surprisingly, the artist is only 20 years old.
Born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, and now a Bronx resident, Soulyeman Traore, also known as Sou, is changing the art scene.
Traore moved from Virginia at 6 months old with his mother, Mimi, and his father, both immigrants from Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. As a middle child with an older brother, a basketball star, and a younger sister, Traore has always tried to find his way.
Growing up, Traore attended All Hallows, an all-boys Catholic school in the Bronx, where he helped manage the team his brother, a grade above him, played on. Being 6’7”, Traore shares how he was in a position of finding his passion and putting an end to pleasing people.
“I guess being 6’7” and not playing sports isn’t normalized. I never had a passion for basketball, and to me, passion isn’t getting up at 6 a.m. to train every day.”
With his older brother, a breakout basketball star at the University of West Virginia, Traore realized he played sports only to fulfill his parents’ happiness. However, when he went to college, he realized that his heart and love were actually attached to cameras and the process of filmmaking, noting, “I knew this was my passion, and work didn’t feel like work.”
With an attendance of over a hundred people across different ethnic backgrounds, the East Village’s TBG gallery space was filled with love and support.
Traore’s mother, Mimi, or “Miss Mimi,” as he said others refer to her, is an anointed woman and a main source of his inspiration. While he was growing up, he shares, “She was forced to grow up fast. She walked miles and miles to sell fish to provide for her brothers and sisters and support her mother,” and through hair braiding and earning her nickname throughout the Bronx, she takes care of her family through hard work.
Traore thanks both his parents for working hard and making sure their life growing up was filled with love, happiness, and connection.
“My purpose is to make my parents proud and to show them that their hard work was never taken for granted.”
When asked to describe himself, Traore says he loves to explore and is an innovator. “I love to get inspired to create something new.”
This was put on full display Saturday night from 7–10 p.m. for the joint magazine launch and photo exhibit. When discussing the origin of the concept of “Just Like My Own,” Traore says it was an exploration of his younger perspective of life growing up in a hair salon. After a conversation with his mother in Burkina Faso, they spoke about the “amazing memories in the shop,” and instantly, this sparked his interest in sharing this perspective with the world.
The images range from photos taken in the U.S. and in Ivory Coast, a trip that also sparked Traore’s career after purchasing a small camera and documenting that journey. The majority of his inspiration comes from artists who aren’t in the same medium as him.
He shares that, for example, Beyoncé had an interview a couple of years back and said, “We lost the art of making a body of work. Everybody just wants to drop singles. I want to make albums and tell stories,” and that always stuck with him.
“Just Like My Own” was very intimate and personal. From family to lifelong friends, creatives, influencers, and more, people came together to discuss the art, what it represented, and reflect with one another.
Among those who attended the event, many echoed how much they were “proud of Sou,” given this was his second event, while others walked around the gallery to admire the different stories each image had to share.
What stands out in Traore’s work is his ability to bridge modern and Western cultures together through the portraits he shoots.
Overall, “Just Like My Own” was a successful event, fusing culture and embracing everyone’s background as ‘one of his own’.
When giving advice to future creators and those wanting to start a new journey, Traore shares that, at the end of the day, you have to keep going because “You’ll have anything that’s meant for you.”
