Offer Families More Than a Memorial Portrait.

06 / The Origin

First I Lost My Father.
Then I Lost His Face.

Almost three years after my father was murdered, my mother remarried. Four years later, she and my stepfather had a son.

Around that time, for reasons I never understood, my mother gathered every photograph she had of my Daddy and gave them to his sister.

I was devastated.

Years later, I tried to get them back, but they were already gone. Over time, I managed to locate three or four photographs of him. Then Hurricane Katrina erased nearly all hope of recovering anything else.

Years passed before one of my cousins surprised me with another photograph of my Daddy.

I wanted to see him smile again.

I ran the image through an AI program. My Daddy smiled and winked at me.

I completely lost my composure.

It took me a while to recover from seeing him move again after all those years. When I did, I realized the potential emotional impact of creating something similar for other people.

Not the losing-control part.

The feeling of briefly receiving something back that grief, time, and disaster had taken away.

Losing that much family history, culture, and photography affected me in ways that can’t be overstated. Helping other people preserve their cherished memories doesn’t erase my losses, but it helps take some of the sting out of them.

Then a friend lost her youngest son to an overdose.

I remembered him as a child, although he was an adult when he died. His mother wanted me to create something unique that she could share with the people who loved him best.

I had no idea what the tribute should become.

Then one night, we stopped discussing the artwork and started remembering the person.

We laughed about how he was always hugging everybody, smiling, and taking selfies. Those stories became the creative direction. I created a tribute video showing him doing exactly what everyone remembered, with the help of AI placing him in creative and comical situations that reflected his personality.

His mother and family still thank me.

That experience taught me something I’ve carried into every Legacy Artist commission:

A photograph can show you what someone looked like.

But when you listen to the people who loved them, you can create something that reminds them who that person was.

That is why every Legacy Artist commission begins with a conversation.