WKCD: How did the “Home” project begin and where has it gone?

Josh: My interest in doing this kind of work developed because I’ve been fortunate to travel around the globe, but realized that I didn’t really know my own community, Tucson. I’ve lived here for a little over eight years, but I still didn’t have a good sense of the diversity in my own community. I knew other parts of the world better than I knew my home.

I talked to the International Refugee Committee (IRC) about working with refugees and doing a photography project. The Tucson office put out a call to a couple of teachers who were working with refugees and immigrant youth in two of the city’s schools. Julie Kasper at Catalina Magnet High School was really excited about the idea—and we jumped right in, figuring out exactly what it would look like. We mostly invented the project from scratch, although both of us brought to it years of experience teaching writing (in Julie’s case) and photography (in my case).

We didn’t have any funding. However, two  funders (The Every Voice in Action Foundation and the Tucson Pima Arts Council),  whom had supported my previous projects, seemed open to our pitching the idea and generously agreed to put some funding behind this project, too.

So last spring we started the project helping forty-five young people in three different ESL classes photograph and write about “home”: where they’ve been in the past, where they are now in Tucson, and how they feel about their journey. For two and a half months Julie and I taught and the youth practiced the basics of photography and writing.

I don’t think we ever imagined the impact the students’ work would end up having. The final, public exhibit—councilwoman and Vice Mayor Nina Trasoff arranged for the exhibit—included 60 pieces of photography, plus writing. The community response was overwhelming. Over 200 or more people came to the opening, more than had ever come to a city council exhibit before, we are told. There were eight newspaper articles, and the local public television and radio stations did pieces, too.

This fall, we convened a public forum where the youth presented their words and photographs and we invited folks in the community to hear what they had to say. About a hundred folks came. Now we are working on a book, with the incredible support of Nina Trasoff. And we are working with Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva and Senator John McCain’s staff to arrange for an exhibit in the US Senate this coming June.

WKCD: Has the project seeded new work this year, with a new group of students?

Josh: Based on our experience with the “Home” project, we decided this year to engage the youth with the community in what we hope is a deeper way. Last fall we asked the youth what themes they wanted to focus on for the semester. They decided on health—from teen pregnancy to alcoholism to gangs. Over the semester, they wrote about and photographed the roles of health and healing in their lives. In December, we had a public forum where we invited health practitioners, people from the schools, from the refugee community—virtually everyone we could reach—to hear the young people talk about their experiences and show their photographs. We also broke into small groups where people could really talk about what they were facing. It was a chance for the youth to learn more about health resources in the community and for health providers to hear directly from youth about their health needs.

This semester we are focusing on the themes of war and immigration. It looks like we’ll do more formal portraiture on the photography end, and then the students will write about their personal experiences with war and immigration. This time, we want to experiment with putting their words directly on top of their photographs. There’s also talk of doing a drama related to the exhibit and putting the students’ work in bus stop shelters.

WKCD: What have you learned, as a photographer, from the project?

Josh: What’s been interesting for me is how all the kids come in with different experiences. I’ve had to learn how to customize my teaching, depending on whom I’m working with and their own experiences with images—both in their home countries and here in Arizona—and how they interpret images.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting down with a few students and looking at images they’ve produced, and I just don’t see a lot that’s visually interesting to me. But then they’ll explain the meaning behind the image and I quickly realize the assumptions I’d made about them and their work and their lives. It also makes me realize how powerful it is for these young immigrants and refugees to produce the work. It’s such an amazing way for us to be educated as teachers and community members.

Last year, for example, a student came in with an image of a lamp hanging from a ceiling. It was basically five light bulbs surrounded by blackness. I truly didn’t understand what she was trying to say through the image. But then she explained that her neighborhood was really boring, there was no life in her neighborhood, it was a sad place to be. She said that each of the light bulbs represented the light and hope inside the homes in the neighborhood, while the blackness represented the darkness outside the homes, in the neighborhood. I now realized the incredible power of her photograph.

This has also made the curating process for this work difficult. I may see an image that doesn’t seem as visually interesting, but the young person’s interpretation of the image is really interesting. So there’s constant negotiation around the criteria for selecting the work that will be shown publicly. Often this editing process isn’t given enough focus, especially with student art projects that will be shared with the public.

Even cropping photos can get complicated. The other day I was talking to students about the pros and cons of including the whole subject or not. One of the African students said that in his country, if you were to visually crop off a part of someone’s body, it would bring them bad luck. Another kid from Africa said that stepping on someone’s shadow—we had a photo of someone with their foot on a shadow—would also be seen as causing bad luck. On the other hand, a student form Iraq said you’re not supposed to show the whole person in a photograph, because you’re not supposed to recreate what Allah creates.

I now realize the strong cultural layers that can underlie a seemingly straightforward question like,  “Should we crop this photo?”  As a photographer, it makes the students’ work even more compelling, though as their mentor sometimes it can feel  paralyzing trying to ensure that my visual voice does not compromise theirs.