R O B I N  E L I S E  M A A Y A

     In December 2021, I was approached by SCAD Serve— the university’s initiative committed to meaningful community partnership— to collaborate with Union Mission of Savannah. I set out with my camera to meet the individuals who seek refuge and support across Union Mission’s campuses, to listen to them, and to make work with them rather than of them. The people I met opened their lives with a generosity that felt almost sacred. In quiet rooms and sun-worn courtyards, they shared their stories, their humor, their exhaustion, and their hope. Each portrait in this collection is the result of that shared labor: a cooperative vision shaped by trust, vulnerability, and the dignity of being seen.

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     After the photographs were made, more of the story unfolded.

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     Union Mission’s newest program, Parker’s House, opened its doors in 2022 as the city’s first dedicated space to house and support women experiencing homelessness while also offering critical mental health care to anyone under Union Mission’s wing. Within its walls, these portraits now hang as visual testaments— reminders of the courage of those who have stepped across the threshold seeking refuge, and of a community working to lift them toward steadier ground. On August 31st, 2022, the doors opened in the heart of Savannah, and the portraits became part of the living, breathing work of the healing happening inside.

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     This project draws its title - and its moral spine - from Flannery O’Connor, Savannah’s own chronicler of the South’s haunted moral landscape. In Everything That Rises Must Converge, O’Connor wrestled with the deep fractures of racial, social, and generational injustice— the uncomfortable truths many prefer not to face. Her line— “the truth does not change according to your ability to stomach it”— stands at the center of this work. It is both a challenge and an invitation.

 

     In the tradition of the Southern Gothic, whose beauty is inextricable from its shadows, these photographs ask viewers to confront something we are trained— knowingly and unknowingly— to look past. We move through our cities brushing shoulders with neighbors whose lives unfold just beyond our peripheral vision. We inherit narratives about who deserves attention and who can be safely ignored. The images in Everything That Rises disrupt that habit of erasure. They ask you to stop, to listen, and to reckon with your own perceptions of the people who share your streets, your sky, your community.

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     There are stories murmuring all around us, every day— stories we hear but rarely listen to. My hope is that these photographs invite you into a deeper kind of witnessing: one rooted in compassion, attuned to complexity, and open to the truth that our neighbors are our neighbors, no matter the circumstances that brought them to the threshold of Union Mission.

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     Here, the people we are taught to overlook look back.