This year's annual project with two schools and the local art museum titled Belongings and Belonging.
Read Morebelongings & belonging
documentary projects
we wear the mask
This year's project with Cohen Hillel Academy, Salem Academy and the Peabody Essex Museum: We Wear the Mask.
Read Morewe are the point
a narrative of a community
It's been said that the "Point is Salem's most diverse neighborhood, home to places and people that you won't find anywhere else. To outsiders, it's also one of the most mischaracterized and misunderstood."
When I moved to Salem in 2006, I heard bits and pieces of the Point neighborhood and in honesty, none of them were positive. Yet the times I walked through the area, I noticed children who played outside, people who talked to one another, and parents who seemed to engage with their children.
A few years ago, I met Claudia Parashniv who reached out to me to photograph her wedding. We quickly became friends and talked long and hard about our interests as artists. As she was just getting started with Salem Public Space Project, I've had the opportunity to document her work including (re)Framing Lafayette Park, Share a Chair and reImage a Lot. In between, I've spent my own time meeting residents and photographing, and what I've experienced is warmth and openness.
While the photographs below are sketches for a larger project Claudia and I are developing, they represent a greater narrative - the people's stories and experiences. While neighborhoods like the Point are vulnerable to gentrification, our real hope is to help preserve the richness and community that exists there today.
Creating Community
Creating Community is a project created through a collaboration between Salem Academy Charter School and Cohen Hillel Academy and guided by Facing History and Ourselves which brings together eighth grade students from each school who embark on a journey together towards building community with each other and within their larger communities.
For the 2013-2014 school year students investigated issues of identity and belonging as they pertain to themselves personally and to those who carried their stories on their journeys to America throughout history. By studying three key moments in American history, students reflected on the tension between assimilation and acculturation and what different cultures and specifically new immigrants have personally struggled with on their journey towards becoming American.
Students monthly at alternating schools to engage in a variety of learning through the use of film, literature, guided activities, presentations and discussion to gain a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of newcomers to America.
One of the key project goals was for students to interview an “immigrant” in the community and during an extended session in April, nine immigrants were invited to Salem Academy Charter School to share their stories on becoming an American with students. Participants were asked to bring an object of importance to them - one that told a story about their their immigrating experience or a keepsake that reminded them of their country or origin.
Utilizing the object as a starting point, students talked with participants and listened to their stories and experiences on becoming an American citizen. The interviews were recorded, and in the final two sessions, students composed an essay about each story.
Each participant was photographed with his or her object, and their portraits were presented alongside the essay written by the students.
North Shore Immigrants
The partnership between Salem Academy Charter School and Cohen Hillel Academy provided opportunities for students to begin to see that they are part of a shared enterprise and that learning about each other through story telling is a powerful tool towards creating community.
An exhibition of student essays pared with a portrait of each person interviewed will be on display at the Salem Visitors & Exhibition center June 12-30.