Twenty Summers

Twenty Summers was thrilled to host our first joint-residency with director and photographer Dawit N.M. & writer and photographer Gioncarlo Valentine earlier this October, and to hear them talk about the residency experience, projects they have (and have attempted) to collaborate on, and other projects they have worked on during COVID-19.Dawit N.M. is a director and photographer currently based in New York. Born in 1996 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he later moved to Hampton Roads, Virginia, with his family at the age of six. After establishing a deep interest in the visual arts, he became an ardent autodidact, committing himself fully to learning the art of filmmaking and later photography. His subjects have taken audiences into worlds of loss, devotion, intimacy, and innocence. In the same vein, the images question the transparency of narratives that are shaped by western influences. This relationship between identity and stereotypes inspired his first self-published photography book, Don’t Make Me Look Lik