We have been told time and time again that curvaceous bodies, dark skin and kinky hair are ugly shameful things to be reviled.

I decided to depart from my usual street and documentary photography and create a series of self-portraits entitled Good Hair, where I show my recently shorn scalp and the dreadlocks I took five years to grow.

In the Black community, "good" hair means straight or wavy hair while "bad" hair is what I have: kinky, frizzy, puffy, and unruly hair. Although Black women today are attempting to redefine this widely accepted idea of beauty through blogs and magazines devoted exclusively to natural hair-care and styles, traditional fashion magazines, music videos, movies, TV sitcoms and dramas still portray desirable Black women as long, straight-haired, light-skinned and light-eyed beauties.

I wanted to use this series of photographs, taken in pastoral settings, to emphasize the natural texture of both sets of my hair - the short hair and the dreadlocks - as well as question the prevailing, yet extremely narrow interpretation of beauty.

Hopefully, this series will show that there is more than one way to define the beauty of a Black woman.