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Growing up in a creative family in Trinidad in the United States,

sisters Salamisha and Shahrazad Tillett develop their own ways of expressing

themselves through words and pictures. And now they've got a chance to explore a theme close to their

hearts, Black Girlhood. You're listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.

I'm Siena Grieves and I'm with the Tillet Sisters as they start to document the joy

and freedom or lack of it experienced by black girls and young women in the U.S. today. We're going to

hear how they play with light and movement to take photographs and respond to those images with words

and phrases to create text alongside, transforming everyday scenes into their own artistic expressions

of what it feels like to be a black girl.

We collaborated as children.

Shahrazad and I were little kids in Black Nativity.

I don't know if that's collaboration proper, but it was this moment for us to share the

stage, get dressed up, and tell this magnificent story that Langston Hughes wrote from the

perspective of Black people.

My name is Shaharah Tillett.

My name is Salamisha Tillett.

And who is the older sister?

I am, Salamisha.

Okay.

So tell me a bit about yourselves.

When I was an adolescent, I always really loved poetry.

...