Dear reader. My name is Aydan Red Eagle Garcia Prime, I am a Lakota Sioux photographer currently located in Watsonville, California. I was born here in Santa Cruz, but was quickly swept away to other parts of California and then to Bermuda, where my family lived until I was 9. After that, I returned to California in Davis, where I attended high school before leaving the state again to study mathematics and Spanish at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
My photos reflect my search for identity in various places--in the Native communities that I am a part of, in the places I live and spend my time, in my travels and time spent abroad. I have always struggled with my identity; growing up as half white and half Native, and with no steady sense of where "home" was, it seemed like who I was would shift and flow as easily and quickly as the tides. I'm still trying to figure out who I am, what I want to be, what it means to be an Indigenous person in this modern, white world we live in.
I find that photography allows me to find a sense of stillness, as if who I am fades away for a quiet moment in the image I've captured. All of my work on this site is from the past few months, when I started shooting film. I'm learning as I go and trying to find a bit of myself in my photos, and I hope you can enjoy something in them too.