“Truly Blessed” documents a marginalized community’s response to racial and religious discrimination. Working closely with the Community Church of Washington, Suspect uses his camera to contrast the sacred and secular.

“Sometimes it is only through photographs that we can see the sacred in the secular, or the secular in the sacred. This collection, Truly Blessed, uses photography to forge a conversation between the sacred black church and secular sexual/erotic spaces, capturing sites where the body, mind, and spirit converge. Suspect’s attention to the subtlety of the performances of everyday people—engaging in rituals of their own choosing—illustrates the diverse and dynamic realities of being black and queer in America.” – Jeffery Q. McCune, PhD Frederick Douglass Professor of American-American Literature and Culture, University of Rochester.