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Ashley Tillery – Street Portraits with a Purpose

50 min • 4 december 2020

Our guest this week is Ashley Tillery, a street photographer from Arlington, Virginia.

Raised in a military family Ashley moved around a lot as a child which exposed her to many different cultures and places. But it wasn’t until after college while working as a folklorist in rural Alabama that she found the inspiration to begin photographing communities of color. And she has been doing it ever since.

Fast forward to today, armed with only an iPhone she continues to follow her passion documenting the people she meets in the DC metro area. Currently she shoots in the Gallery Place / Chinatown area of downtown DC. Here she focuses on making compelling and personal street portraits of perfect strangers.

It’s through her work that Ashley was invited to join the DC Street Photography Collective, which is high praise indeed.

Don’t get me wrong, Ashley does more than make portraits. She captures candid moments on the street too. All within her mission to document the lives of people of color.

Ashley is smart, friendly and funny which enables her to connect with her subjects in a very personal way. She gets close, not just physically but emotionally which is evident in her work. It’s obvious that she gains the trust of her subjects who respond in kind. The result is a visual narrative of a community most of us only see from a distance.

After you listen to my conversation with Ashley be sure to spend some quality time with her work.