Whoever controls the lens holds the power.

We talk about “taking” or “shooting” a photograph--language that reflects the photographer’s power to control the narrative and the potential for abuse or mischaracterization inherent in the exercise of that control. What does it look like to “make” a photograph that shares story telling between photographer and subject? How is a shared photographic story a fundamentally different story serving different goals?  

Collaborative Portraits are co-created. The young women and I make environmental portraits, collaboratively set and staged, but ultimately telling the story as I see it. The photographic portrait then becomes a canvas re-interpreted and altered by the young women, through painting and collage, to express their visions and self-views. Ultimately, through an art and social justice workshop, each young woman writes her “I Am Why statement”, which is digitally added to the collaborative portrait.

These collaborative portraits and the conversations they inspired have been published in the art and social justice book,  I Am Why Reclaiming the Lens.

 

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The Life and Death of Sheila Estrada, 1981-2025

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