Nadia Huggins is a self-taught photographer from St.Vincent & the Grenadines; her primary focus for the past 11 years has been documentary and conceptual photography. She has an invested interest in creating work of and about the Caribbean. She is the co-founder of ARC Magazine, a contemporary Caribbean art publication and a full-time freelance graphic designer.
Circa no future explores fearlessness and the present moment. Since moving back to St Vincent in 2013, I’d wanted to work with young boys on the island, to find ways to document their positive experiences through images. I was fascinated by the interaction between these teenage boys, away from adult supervision. There is a sense of camaraderie when they swim out and explore the sea together.
I started recognizing myself in these boys, jumping off of boats and two large rock islands off the beach I grew up on. I spent a lot of my adolescence jumping off of these islands too, so I felt an instant connection to their experience. I was particularly interested in documenting the form of their bodies underwater, and again when they are climbing back up onto the rock. In these moments, they are less aware of the camera.
I feel as though there has been a lack of positive representation of the black male body in the Caribbean sea. I wanted to create a body of work to play a part in shifting this dynamic. These are all teenage boys who spend their weekends bonding with one another at the beach, fishing and just enjoying their youth. It felt like an important moment in their lives to capture.
