Boogiee’s life embodies the word “intersectionality”: how different power structures and discrimination systems interact at the individual level. She has experienced racism, abuse, harassment, discrimination and homelessness, when she was abandoned at 13 by her mom - one day a school psychologist called the mother to inform her she had kissed a girl, that is where it all started. She lived in LGBTQ shelters Upstate New York and in Harlem and gradually over the course of 12 months she improved her living situation to the point where she currently pays her own rent and works three jobs, in addition to training and dancing, her passion.


Boogiee leads a mostly male street dance crew, the Raiders of Concrete, that regularly performs in Union Square. “I love to be the leader of a crew because I can give people the chance to express themselves beyond words. I give an example to younger people: if you believe in what you do you can get it in any circumstance. On the streets I had to defend both my dance and my sexuality. Fortunately I never had to compromise or sell my soul or my body to survive. Do you know why gay Black youth are a very high percentage of underage homeless kids? Their families throw them out. I myself never had the chance to do a coming out, I have been put out. Continuously in American cities one is reminded that if you're Black you are a second class citizen”.


She has overcome several obstacles and has learned to advocate for herself. At the 2015 Gay Pride Parade in New York City she was marching proudly down Fifth Avenue with a sign to show the world.


I have been photographing her since 2014. I had seen her on New Year’s Eve in 2011 dancing on the L train platform, we were both alone that night. On our first online exchange, three years later, Boogiee talked to me straight as an arrow: “What do you do?” “I photograph and write”, “Do you wanna tell my story?”, “Which story is that?”, “Who I am and why I do what I do”.

Using Format