For five years, Laila AnnMarie Stevens documented multiple generations of her family as they moved from New York City to North Carolina for better opportunities and “a different quality of life.” Stevens says she saw it as a kind of reversal of the historic Great Migration of the early 20th century, in which thousands of Black families moved from the South to the North to escape racial injustice and build better lives for themselves.
NPR asked Stevens about her photographs, which also document the landscape of the South and multiple generations within both her biological and chosen family, from friends, siblings, aunties and cousins to grandparents, great-grandparents and even living great-great grandparents.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.…