Beauty Plus

Beauty Plus features photographs by Jasmine Ross, an Oakland-based multimedia artist whose practice centers identity politics, intergenerational memory, and fictive kinship. Working primarily with large-format cameras, Ross documents the closure of a 31-year-old Black-owned beauty supply store in New Haven, Connecticut, using photography to honor the store’s owner and the community that gathered there. Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. March 18, 2026 — Runs through May 31, 2026. Over three months, Ross photographed the store’s final days with a 4 x 5 film camera, building a portrait of small business ownership, communal care, and Black survival. The exhibition also considers the contradictions within Black beauty economies: these spaces can offer affirmation, access, and cultural continuity while also revealing how Black identity is shaped, marketed, and monetized through products often owned by outsiders. The project positions the beauty supply store as both a social space and a site of cultural tension, where intimacy, dependency, and self-fashioning intersect. Through analog photography’s deliberate pace, Ross gives sustained attention to a place and community in transition.