Dustin Shores was born in 1983 and grew up in the rolling foothills of North Carolina. He received his BFA in Fine Arts Photography from Winthrop University, located in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 2009. He recently completed his MFA in Photography from The University of Arizona, Tucson in the Spring of 2018. Shores is currently based in Charlotte, North Carolina where he is exploring regionally based projects. His photographic work of family, love, and loss address the social and economic systems in which we endure.
Leaving Alice
Leaving Alice is a photographic journey to locate and reconnect with my twenty-five foster brothers and sisters across the country. I began by traveling back to my grandparents’ home in North Carolina, where I was raised as their own child. Assisted by my grandmother Alice, I reached out to my foster siblings hopeful that they could help reunite me with other members of our family.
Alice emerged as the underlying foundation that shaped my process of looking, responding, and processing our shared experiences. My foster siblings and I do not share the same biological parents, nor the same circumstances that placed us under my grandparents’ care. We were not all raised together, and most didn’t have access to the continued stability that I was provided. But we did share Alice.
The process of loving and losing that shaped my childhood was a cycle that Alice helped me through once again during the year we reconnected with my siblings. This journey gave me back a part of myself that I had lost over time. The complexity and adversity we endured are imagined in this body of work, as is the capacity for love that she provided and continues to feel for us all. Alice serves as the connective thread between us, linking our present to our past.
To view more of Dustin Shores’s work please visit his website.