‘Life has not stopped for grief’: the photographer holding Breonna Taylor’s memory

Four years after police killed Taylor, Scheherazade Tillet hopes art is not the only justice Taylor's family will see

I first visited Breonna Taylor's home in Louisville, Kentucky, after the first anniversary of her death. I had recognized the apartment from the video footage, forensic reports, and witness accounts of the night that police officers fatally shot the 26-year-old in the early hours of 13 March 2020. In time, her life and legacy would galvanize a nation to reckon with police violence against Black women, but in the immediate days and hours after her death, her family was mourning her loss and beginning their long fight for justice.

I had come to Louisville from Chicago to pay my respects and because I was creating The Black Girlhood Altar, an art project that pays homage to the lives of Black girls and young Black women who have gone missing or been murdered in the United States. At first, I had looked at street murals and toured the exhibition dedicated to her Promise, Witness, Remembrance" at the Speed Art Museum, but to truly understand the trauma that unfolded, I needed to go to back to the beginning, the place she called home.