Burney Road 2026

 Burney Road traces maternal lineage, moving through the emotional and physical terrain that connects my grandmother, mother, and me. Named after the street where my grandmother was raised and where our family’s story took root in Chestnut, Louisanna, Burney Road operates as a real and imagined site where time folds and generations co-exist.

Archival family photographs alongside contemporary self-portraiture engage the archive as a living, expanding space rather than a fixed record. Encounters with images of my mother as a child, taken by my grandmother reveal photography as an inherited language, an instinct and way of seeing passed down across generations. The work explores how memory is carried and how identity is shaped over time through mirroring. Burney Road reflects an ongoing effort to locate oneself within lineage and to honor the visual and emotional inheritance passed through generations of women.

Melanee “Mel” Brown is a Houston-born photographer whose work explores family dynamics, self-discovery and the concept of re-memory, bridging past and present through archival imagery. Working primarily with medium format film, her practice explores how personal histories are constructed, preserved, and reimagined through photography.