Telling the story of a community through photography

I think now in most of our experiences of seeing images online, we're really lost as to what is real, what isn't, what's been produced by a camera, what's been produced by artificial intelligence. By doing a documentary project, I think it reminds people of the value of the photograph. Throughout the class, we cover fact and fiction in photography. So we start off by doing a documentary project. So I wanted students to use photography as a way to tell stories and to raise awareness about issues in the community. And in the past, I've often done this partnered with a community organization. Head Start had reached out to me in my capacity as chair of studio art. So, we started to talk about organizing times for my class to come and visit, to meet with the kids, take photographs. Each student kind of selected some of the best of their images. We submitted them as a portfolio, and they ultimately chose their one image that they liked that would be the kind of the the large scale mural that we would produce. This project really just is about, like as a documentation project is really significant because it's capturing these moments that are, like so special. And just really what Head Start is about. The community, education, just putting kids on the right track. That's just so important to me. And that's what really was so significant. It's really about kids playing, having fun but then also learning at the same time, but also learning as one. You know, it's not separate learning. It's together. And that's what I wanted to show in my photographs. I think more and more we're going to be looking to photography as some sort of a tie to reality. Really thinking of photographs as being a record. I think will become more and more valuable as we move into the future. It really just shows how important being involved is within your community. I mean, I'm from obviously a different community where I was also pretty involved. Getting to bring that to Blacksburg and Virginia Tech and as a student here is just it's a magical experience. And I think that a lot of more people should get involved. And I'm glad that Virginia Tech offers things like this that we can contribute to. I think for for me and for all the students, it's been super rewarding. They've gotten a lot out of it. I think a lot of times in an art program, we can get stuck in our studios and or on our laptops and just kind of focusing on the individual experience of making art. And I think the value of this is to remind people that art has an impact in a broader sense. It can tell stories, it can raise awareness. It can contribute to conversations about what's happening in the neighborhood, in the region, and it helps our students realize how they can use what they're learning in the classroom out in the world to make a difference.