One of my sorority sisters, Hannah Levy is a senior in the photography department her at VCU. For this blog post I wanted to share a project that Hannah is working on for her senior portfolio class. Immediately when Shane told us about this project, I thought of her. This project is inspired by two projects she did for VCU's concepts class. The first, decisive moments, is a project focusing on other people's life changing events whether good or bad. The first picture displayed below is from this project. The next project, Like you for always, is a project focusing on her dad's death from pancreatic cancer. The second image displayed below is from this project. The project she is working on now is sort of a combination of the two. In her current project, she is taking pictures of cancer victims and those with loved ones who suffered or are suffering from cancer. She shares her story, interviews them, and then takes pictures of them. She is using a digital camera, but is thinking about moving to 120 color medium format. This project is in the very beginning stages. She's had one critique so far where she displayed images with audio from the interview in the background. She is thinking about incorporating more voices from interviews and also incorporating death certificates and documents. Through this process, Hannah is getting to know her subjects on a very personal level, and some have told her it was very therapeutic. Here is an exert from a letter one of her subjects wrote.
"I am thrilled that you came to visit me today. There are a number of reasons why I am glad that you came. The primary reason I am happy you came was that you forced me to talk about having cancer."
Hannah faces a very hard piece of her past every time she pursues this project. She is continually having to be vulnerable with her subjects, telling them the difficulties of losing her dad to cancer, so they will feel more comfortable sharing their story with her. One of Hannah's biggest fears in this project is becoming depressed. She is constantly having to face the loss of her dad and is dealing with so much emotion in this project. This is precisely what keeps her going further, because although it is very hard emotionally, she knows the work that will come from it will hold such genuine emotion.
The third image displayed below is from this project. She is searching for people wanting to participate, so if you know anyone who was/is a victim of cancer, feel free to contact her!
www.hannahlevyphotography.com
levyhf@vcu.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment