Created collaboratively by In-Sight and The Hall Farm Center
for Arts & Education, Exposures is an image and cultural
exchange that utilizes photography as a common language between
youth from diverse communities. Last summer marked the first
Exposures group trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
in South Dakota.
This year’s Exposures group, made up of students from
In-Sight as well as ICP at The Point and the Educational Video
Center in the Bronx, with staff and teachers from In-Sight
and Hall Farm, headed to Pine Ridge to once again teach and
learn in the countless ways that social and cultural immersion
allows. All brought together by the common thread of image
making.
 After
months of planning and anticipation we were finally in one
place—a mixture of students, photographers and educators
who would spend the next three weeks traveling, living, working
and creating—together. June 28th we departed Brattleboro,
headed in a caravan toward two trains, three vans, one dorm,
and an ongoing string of new experiences—photographic,
cultural, social and spiritual. Headed toward Pine Ridge,
into the heat of July and the great parched plains of South
Dakota.
 This
summer’s trip was an amalgam of experience; some entirety
new, some building on the familiarity and accomplishments
of the year before. In addition to the SuAnne Big Crow Boys
and Girl’s Club, we now had a chance to work with an
older age group at the local Youth Opportunity Movement teen
center. Portrait studios littered town—inside and out
at Youth Opportunity and the Boys and Girl’s Club, the
shopping center, the dorm, and at the horse races in a nearby
community. Neatly arranged rows of soaking negatives multiplied
into tightly packed buckets as the papers from Polaroid pack
film were pulled apart to reveal images of friends, family,
community members, strangers. A constant assembly of negatives
sandwiched between glass and light-sensitive cloth flowed
in and out of the dorm as we transformed the moments we’d
captured into the sun prints which would provide the patchwork
of a photographic quilt. Teaching crews came and went in shifts,
opportunities to explore our surroundings and participate
in community events rolled out in front of us. The group attended
a Sun Dance, visited the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre,
participated in a sweat lodge ceremony, saw the sun rise and
set against the magnificent backdrop of the Badlands, and
watched as the sky lit up with the explosive colors of July
4th. The days and nights of teaching, photographing and conversing
passed as quickly as the afternoon storms, and soon we found
ourselves traveling east again, thousands of memories stored
away on tiny frames of film.
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Special thanks to the Copper Beech Foundation, Youth
Opportunity Movement, SuAnne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club,
Jerry Swope, Rose McNulty, Thrifty Car Rentals, Brattleboro
Community Television and the Oglala Lakota College Department
of Nursing for their generosity and collaboration in this
year’s Exposures program. |
29 June 9:45 pm
... So here we are, Exposures Take 2... On the search for
connections. Will it be this image? These words? That new
friend? Where do we match up and connect and get it, what
do we go through to get there? Those are the thoughts that
ran through my head today, walking through the dark, diesel-fumed
tunnel at Union Station, all of us making our way, lugging
our loads…Then soon after, bags packed away, the whole
group seated together as the California Zephyr exploded out
of the darkness into the remaining light of the Chicago afternoon.
-Nora Zale
04 July 11:14 pm
Memories of yesterday linger, the coming of age ceremony,
a handful of Lakota women (a few men too: singers and drummers
and family)... but it is all for the girls, about to become
women. One of the elders tells us how many women come to the
girls throughout the four days to teach them various lessons.
"I teach them emotional and spiritual strength, because
one of the things that hurt women the most are our hearts.
Some of us just get so lost..." The ceremony was beautiful...
the photos I made afterwards will hopefully contain some of
the spirit behind it…
-Nora Zale
The sun is that really warm orange color right now-I'm just
sitting at our picnic table admiring the wide, flat view.
I'm in one of those moments when I really love South Dakota...
right now the hot air is not too much, and the cold showers
are not that frustrating—everything is in balance, the
fireworks have concluded and the reservation seems still.
It's a good moment. Sitting here feels like I am in a different
country. The streets are covered in melted plastic figures
and colorful paper bits, but the sky is so beautiful, even
when a storm is moving near. There is so much room to breath.
-Bridget Tweedy
…the fireworks had been exploding at least since we
got here and probably even before, but those little displays
of pyrotechnic mirth were put to shame on this day of celebration.
The professionals with the big guns put on their own show
at the local pow wow grounds, but they were blown out of the
water by the locals. Sure the pros got points for loudest
explosions and brightest fireworks, but the townsfolk more
than made up for it with spirit. For hours before during and
after the scheduled show the night sky was lit up with little
bursts of light that quickly disappeared leaving only the
smell of sulphur to prove it had been there at all. Never
before had I seen entire neighborhoods, indeed an entire community,
band together to have such a rip roaring sky burning good
time. Truly amazing stuff. I’m amazed any of us slept
at all.
-Chris Miller
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