*This story is brought to you by Most Incredible Studio founder Syreeta Gates as a part of our Because Of You: Legacy in Focus campaign honoring contemporary Black photographers*
She’s created a universe with Black love at the center!
Faith Couch moves through photography with a mission—to build entire worlds where Black love, intimacy, and everyday beauty thrive without limitation. Her images are cinematic universes, crafted with intention and filled with moments that feel like memories, even if you’ve never lived them.
“I’m always thinking about the history of Black image-making and how important it is for Black people to tell their own stories because if not, other people will tell it for us,” Couch says. She carries this responsibility into every project, pulling from archival imagery, contemporary storytelling, and the essence of nostalgia to construct what she calls Black memory landscapes.
Couch’s work exists in a space where time bends. The scenes she creates could be from the ’70s, ’80s, or today—intentionally leaving the viewer suspended between eras. This deliberate time agnosticism is part of her approach to world-building. She isn’t tied to realism. She’s tied to possibility.
Her images transform the ordinary into the extraordinary from high school gymnasiums to backyard gatherings, from a girls’ sleepover to a quiet moment in a movie theater. They feel like experiences infused with tenderness, nostalgia, and an unapologetic commitment to reimagining Black life beyond struggle.
For Couch, the mundane isn’t mundane at all—it’s sacred. Black joy, care, and connection hold just as much weight as any grand historical moment. Her preoccupation with love in all its forms drives her work, leading her to explore familial relationships, romance, and friendships through her unique photographic lens.
“We have a lot of directors like Wes Anderson and John Waters who create vibrant, stylized worlds,” she says. “I’m focusing on making these Black memory landscapes just as beautiful and exciting, without centering struggle—because we’ve seen every variation of how Black people can die and struggle. I want to explore all the ways we can live and love.”
Couch believes in the power of the tangible. As the digital world moves faster and faster, she emphasizes the importance of physical objects, photographs, and archives. She sees archiving as an act of protection, a way to preserve Black stories in forms that can’t be erased by an algorithm.
This is why she feels deeply connected to Because of You: Legacy in Focus, the collaborative LEGO set designed to celebrate Black storytelling from Because Of Them We Can and Most Incredible Studio.
“I think all Black people should be archivists,” she says. “We have to keep objects, photographs—physical forms of data that inform our surroundings and our history.”
Couch is only getting started, but she’s already shaping how future generations will see Black life. A century from now, when people revisit her body of work, she hopes they feel limitless. She wants them to see tenderness, intimacy, and a full spectrum of emotions that have always existed in Black life.
She creates worlds where love is the foundation, where memory and magic blend, where Blackness stands in its full-depth vibrancy and beauty.
Cover photo: Meet Faith Couch, the Photographer Transforming the Way We See Black Love/Photo credit: Faith Couch/@BlackPowerPrincess/Instagram