Joshua Parks is an imagemaker and cultural worker from Jacksonville, Florida. His roots stretch back over seven generations in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Florida’s Gulf Coast. His work analyzes urban and rural Afro-descendant communities in the Black Belt South and the Atlantic world; their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory; and how these elements influence social and cultural development.

Parks was the principal photographer for the Greenbook of South Carolina (2022), and has photos exhibited at the International African American Museum, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and the Seashore Farmers’ Lodge Museum and Cultural Center. He has worked as an in-house producer for the International African American Museum, contributing to their core digital exhibitions (short educational documentaries) such as Carolina Gold, Memories of the Enslaved, Gullah Geechee Overview Film, Moving Star Hall, the Parks/Wilder Family History, and more. He currently owns and operates Cimarron Productions, a full scale film, photography, and digital media company, in addition to co-founding the Lowcountry Arts Movement, a non-profit dedicated to building an ecosystem of Black artists, cultural workers, and organizers whose goal is to create and promote art and programming that raises the collective consciousness of the Lowcountry community and beyond. Parks received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in History from Howard University, and is pursuing a Masters degree in Public History at the College of Charleston.

Where in the World Am I?

by Dr. Millicent E. Brown, Ph.D.

Joshua Parks speaks passionately about his cross-cultural roots. His mother’s Gulf Coast Creole lineage traces through Pensacola, Florida, blending with his father’s deep James Island ancestry. Growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, he moved between these places, shaping his understanding of identity and belonging. Regular visits to South Carolina immersed him in the landscapes that crystallized his vision of the Lowcountry–not just as a geographical space but as a cultural inheritance, carried in the voices, movements, and traditions of its people. These influences converge into what is now recognized as Gullah-Geechee heritage.

By the time he arrived in Charleston for college and later settled there permanently in 2019, his perspective had already been shaped by experiences beyond the South. Living in Washington, D.C., he encountered a world far more expansive than he had known. “As you go places, you get to know yourself,” he proclaims, acknowledging the process of self-exploration that travel afforded him. His journeys across the African diaspora–to South Africa, Senegal, and Gambia, and throughout the Caribbean, from Haiti to the Bahamas and Cuba–deepened his understanding of the historical and cultural ties that link Black people across continents. In each place, he found something deeply familiar: the cadence of speech, the seasoning of food, the spiritual practices, the communal ways of being that felt like echoes of a home away from home.

Parks became deeply curious about how people sounded, how they carried themselves, how they honored their ancestors, and how their environment shaped their ways of knowing. He recognized that the beauty and nuance of cultural expressions he knew intimately–through family, community partners, neighbors, and friends–were not isolated but instead part of a vast, interconnected lineage that stretched back centuries. The unspoken familiarity he felt in the presence of people across the diaspora was not coincidence but evidence of shared origins.

Yet one thing troubled him: the lack of connection and communication among Africans and African descendants throughout the world. While traditions thrived, they were often practiced without a full awareness of their historical and global significance. The Lowcountry’s worship practices, storytelling, music, and food were deeply rooted in African traditions, yet many who carried them forward had little knowledge of their origins. He saw this as both a loss and an opportunity–a call to reconnect the threads of a fractured yet enduring history.

For Parks, this was not merely an academic concern but a personal mission. He saw how survival had been mistaken for pride, how the trauma of history often overshadowed the brilliance of the culture itself. He realized that the answers he sought wouldn’t come from merely studying within the academy, but from engaging with the living–documenting the world through photography, oral history, and film. By turning his lens on the landscapes and people that shaped him, he found a way to bridge the past and present, to capture not only what is seen but what is remembered, felt, and carried forward.

By the time he had traveled extensively across the diaspora, his political consciousness had sharpened. He came to understand the weight of global oppression on Black and Brown people and felt a deep responsibility to tell their stories–not just as an act of documentation but as an act of resistance and reclamation. Whether through intimate portraits, landscapes, or family archives, his work connects Africans and African descendants highlighting where they are, where they came from, and most importantly, where the similarities of mind and heart criss-crossed lands and seas.

Though he respects the academic world and the knowledge it offers, his approach is rooted in something more personal. His photographs reflect a profound recognition of genetic, social, and cultural connections. Time and again, he has found himself looking at someone and thinking, “You look like my aunt, my grandfather, my childhood playmate.” Parks found himself repeating time and time again, wondering sometimes, “Where in the world am I?”

This exhibition is an invitation to see–not only with the eyes but with the spirit, as Parks shares with viewers the result of his early fascination with looking through hundreds of family photographs, seeing rather than reading about the past, the present, and undoubtedly the future of African people worldwide.

¿Dónde me encuentro en el mundo?

Por la Dra. Millicent E. Brown, Ph.D.

Joshua Parks habla con pasión sobre el cruce de culturas en sus raíces. El linaje criollo de su madre en la Costa del Golfo se extiende por Pensacola, Florida, fusionándose con la profunda ascendencia de James Island de su padre. Criado en Jacksonville, Florida, se movía entre estos lugares, lo que forjó su comprensión de la identidad y la pertenencia. Sus visitas regulares a Carolina del Sur lo sumergían en los paisajes que cristalizaron su visión del Lowcountry, no solo como un espacio geográfico, sino como una herencia cultural, presente en las voces, movimientos y tradiciones de su gente. Estas influencias convergen en lo que ahora se reconoce como el patrimonio Gullah-Geechee.

Para cuando llegó a Charleston a estudiar en la universidad y más tarde establecerse allí permanentemente en 2019, su perspectiva ya había sido moldeada por experiencias más allá del Sur. Viviendo en Washington, D.C., se encontró con un mundo mucho más amplio del que había conocido. “Al recorrer lugares, te conoces a ti mismo”, proclama, reconociendo el proceso de autoexploración que le brindaron los viajes. Sus recorridos a través de la diáspora africana —a Sudáfrica, Senegal y Gambia, y por todo el Caribe, desde Haití hasta las Bahamas y Cuba— profundizaron su comprensión de los lazos históricos y culturales que unen a las personas negras por todos los continentes. En cada lugar, encontró algo profundamente familiar: la cadencia del habla, la sazón de la comida, las prácticas espirituales, las formas de ser comunitarias que sentía como ecos de un hogar lejos de casa.

Parks desarolló una profunda curiosidad por cómo sonaba la gente, cómo se comportaba, cómo honraba a sus antepasados ​​y cómo su entorno moldeaba sus formas de conocimiento. Reconoció que la belleza y los matices de las expresiones culturales que él conocía íntimamente —a través de su familia, sus compañeros de la comunidad, sus vecinos y sus amigos— no estaba desligados, sino formaban parte de un vasto linaje interconectado que se remontaba siglos atrás. La familiaridad tácita que sentía en presencia de personas a lo largo de la diáspora no era casualidad, sino evidencia de orígenes compartidos.

Sin embargo, algo le preocupaba: la falta de conexión y comunicación entre africanos y afrodescendientes en todo el mundo. Si bien las tradiciones prosperaban, a menudo se practicaban sin una plena conciencia de su importancia histórica y global. Las prácticas de culto, los relatos, la música y la gastronomía del Lowcountry estaban profundamente arraigadas en las tradiciones africanas; sin embargo, muchos de quienes las transmitían desconocían sus orígenes. Él veía esto como una pérdida y una oportunidad a la vez: una llamada a reconectar los hilos de una historia fragmentada pero perdurable.

Para Parks, esto no era solo una preocupación académica, sino una misión personal. Vio cómo la supervivencia se había confundido con el orgullo, cómo el trauma de la historia a menudo eclipsaba la brillantez de la cultura misma. Comprendió que las respuestas que buscaba no provendrían simplemente del estudio académico, sino de la interacción con los seres vivos: documentando el mundo a través de la fotografía, la historia oral y el cine. Al enfocar su mirada en los paisajes y las personas que lo moldearon, encontró la manera de conectar el pasado con el presente, de capturar no solo lo que se ve, sino también lo que se recuerda, se siente y se salvaguarda.

Tras viajar extensamente por la diáspora, su conciencia política se había agudizado. Comprendió el peso de la opresión global sobre las personas negras y morenas y sintió la profunda responsabilidad de contar sus historias, no solo como un acto de documentación, sino como un acto de resistencia y reivindicación. Ya sea a través de retratos íntimos, paisajes o archivos familiares, su obra conecta a africanos y afrodescendientes, destacando dónde están, de dónde provienen y, sobre todo, dónde sus similitudes de mente y corazón atravesaron tierras y mares.

Aunque respeta el mundo académico y el conocimiento que ofrece, su enfoque se basa en algo más personal. Sus fotografías reflejan un profundo reconocimiento de las conexiones genéticas, sociales y culturales. Una y otra vez, se ha encontrado mirando a alguien y pensando: “Te pareces a mi tía, a mi abuelo, a mi compañero de juegos de la infancia”. Parks se repetía una y otra vez, preguntándose a veces: “¿Dónde me encuentro en el mundo?”.

Esta exposición es una invitación a ver, no sólo con los ojos sino con el espíritu, mientras Parks comparte con los espectadores el resultado de su temprana fascinación por mirar cientos de fotografías familiares, viendo en lugar de leer sobre el pasado, el presente y, sin duda, el futuro de los africanos en todo el mundo.