Don Claude

MFA ’22 Photography

Looking outward through the eyes of my mom, my lens on the world became more graceful as a young teen. The challenges of others put my personal, familial, and judicial hardships in perspective.Ā 

My family history and its reclamation of a new home, positions me and them within a context where the construction and deconstruction of identities and tensions that occur as a result of adaptation, assimilation and our attempts to accustom ourselves with the notion of alienation has had a profound impact on my work. In my photographs, I reflect on and reimagine scenes from my own personal history: I see images from Ghana and Italy and more recently from America. I incorporate all these visual languages into the images I create. As a once-stateless person who had to learn how to navigate institutions, cultures and languages, my work merges my distinct identities as an African, black, hyper-visible, and invisible man in America.



Claudio is a photo-based artist and educator at Harvard University. He received his BS in Biological Sciences from Bridgewater State University in 2019 and an MFA degree in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2022. Born in Accra, Ghana, lived in Italy until 9 years old, to currently residing in Worcester, MA, Claudio continues expanding his body of work ā€œElegant Alienā€. His work is currently exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum.

Borderless-headshots-Claudio_Eshun_portrait_11.2_DSC1562