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Black Archives Edition
Welcome Home
Director: Herrana Addisu / Art Director and Producer: Renata Cherlise / Director of Photography: Nicholas Johnson / Photographer: Steve Irby BTS: Nikita (Snikka) Freyermuth /
Production Manager: Ruth Messele / Production Coordinator and Project Manager: Menen Ebrahim / Production Assistant: Mustafa Osman
Special Thanks to Roderick Huntley and Russell Hamilton
Featuring: George Carty, Omari Maynard, Gerald Valme, Zara Valme, Shandel Burke, Catherine Mbali, Kojo Mbali, Nigel Caldon, Vaughn Caldon, Shawnee Gibson, Isaiah Frazier, Torian Easterling, and Sean Pressley
Welcome Home
"Welcome Home" is a visual storytelling series by Chucha Studios, dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black immigrants. Through powerful imagery and personal narratives, this series explores themes of resilience, strength, and community, offering a deeply personal yet universally resonant look into the Black immigrant experience.
For this installment, we’ve partnered with Black Archives to honor the legacy of George Carty—affectionately known as Uncle George—a Trinidadian immigrant who built his life and community in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Through a curated collection of archival photographs collected by Omari Maynard, Uncle George’s grandson, this series illuminates the power of historical identity and cultural preservation.
Through archival photography and storytelling, we bring his family’s journey to life—tracing back to the 1920s migration of his grandparents from Trinidad to Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Their lineage is one of resilience, service, and creativity, culminating in the family home - a living testament to the power of Black history, migration, and cultural preservation.
Welcome Home's installment with Black Archives is an open call to the public-- we invite individuals to submit their own archival photographs and stories, contributing to a collective narrative that reflects the richness and diversity of the Black immigrant journey.
This series is more than just a tribute-- it's a call to honor our histories, preserve our stories, and celebrate the legacy of Black immigrants.
Vernacular photography animates the multidimensional realities of Black existence- allowing for the celebration of family units and their legacies, preserving lineage and culture. By delving into this story, we'll explore the distinct backgrounds, how the immigration process is reflected in their daily life, and the ebbs and flows of Black diasporic life through the lens of Uncle George and his family.
The Carty Moats Maynard Story
The story of the Carty Moats Maynard family is one deeply rooted in service, community, and art. It begins with Ma and Boompa, a Trinidadian couple who migrated to Harlem in the 1920s, seeking opportunity and a better life. They raised their four children in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, where creativity flourished, and Black culture thrived.
By the 1940s, their perseverance led them to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where Uncle George’s father—a taxi driver—purchased a brownstone. Their home became more than just a house—it became a sanctuary for Black immigrants, a gathering place for community, creativity, and culture. As the years passed, the family’s home would become a hub where art, photography, music, and Caribbean traditions thrived, carried forward through each new generation.
Interview with Omari Maynard
How did your family’s immigration journey begin?
“My great grandfather [Boompa] came to the US from Trini to help pave streets in NYC/Brooklyn. Trini people were known to lay tar well and the US needed people to do it here. He brought his brother with him to do it as well.”
How do these photographs communicate your family’s immigration?
“These photographs tell a story of how they got there and importantly how they got to stay and thrive here.” What spoke to Boompa and Ma is the cultivating of a Trini community in NYC and keeping their family unit together.
His great grandfather was a taxi driver upon arrival, as well as a freemason. He brought people from Trinidad to the states, wanting to help them pave a way of life here.
Having a brownstone, Boompa helped the Trinidadians transition into the environment by letting them reside with him until they were able to find and finance their own place.
A testament to being focused on family and community, as well as uplifting each other, Boompa wanted his peers to feel properly adjusted to the city and provided his brownstone as a space of familiarity and comfort.
What role has community and legacy played a role in your “Welcome Home’ story?
Everything! It was and continues to be everything for the Maynard family.
“The thing is, you don't pick your family, but you pick your community. I was blessed that the people in my family shared the same ethos and values, wanting to make a way and helping each other build upon their resources at the time."
Omari says that his grandpa was able to purchase that brownstone because of the community he built, as one of the lodgers had connections to the previous owner and was able to settle a deal, acknowledging how the people in his community helped one another when able!
The Maynard family continues today through paying this forward and creating an ecosystem where painting, photography, and painting is used to uplift and represent everyone's story.
What traditions do you keep alive here?
The family is currently spread out across the country, as his mother and brother both reside in North Carolina. They all make sure to visit one another during Christmas and summer time.
Since he has children now, he tries to take trips out the country every year but since the children’s mother passed it's been difficult the past few years.
“We try to create space for the kid’s friends to be in community with them, like [hosting] end of year and start of school year BBQ’s.”
Favorite dish or recipe?
“Ma was the first child to be born in the states and raised in Harlem, states she is a New Yorker.” Omari states that there are no “authentic recipes” from Trinidad that live in the family.
But his favorite dish is oxtail, rice and peas, and cabbage- “which are not a family recipe”, Omari states.
What do you want people to take away from the photographic retelling of your family’s history?
Omari wants people to understand that, for him, more importantly, it's the humbleness of what even having these photos means. Hee understands that many of the people he knows lack access to photos of their grandparents engaged in mundane activities- a testament to “how much of our culture and legacy is and continues to be stripped from Black people.”
These photographs are not just snapshots of what his family was doing at the time, but a snapshot of “all of our people” (Black people) in that era.
Omari states that this is a “miniscule amount” of reality of what Black people were able to see in the media, as there was little to no representation in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
“We are just carbon copies of the people who came before us”. To have this edifice (brownstone) and being able to retell this story in the same building and to raise his own children there is important to uphold and carry on the family’s history, Omari emphasizes.
Omari pushes people who have something similar like a homebase, like a brownstone, to try their best to preserve and document all of it so it can be passed down to next generations- the same way he is!
How has the cultural heritage of your family shaped your sense of identity and belonging? Who will pass down your family’s story?
“Just knowing where you came and who you are, as it guides you to who you want to be and who you are!”
Omari feels that he is not that different from everyone who came before him. His uncle, grandparents, himself, were all artists. Whether painters or dancers, his current work as a creative is a relic of everyone who came before him. Knowing that so many relatives were artists gave him the confidence to pursue his passions in the arts.
His uncle George is “the conduit between what's happened in the 40s, 50s, 60s up until now”. For now, Uncle George is the one in the family to pass down family stories, but after him it will be Omari maintaining the brownstone and photographs of current family and family members to come.