This class was born out of a collaboration between photographer Liz Williams and myself. We were both interested in how to amplify young’s peoples voices during these socially distressed times. I was studying works by Chip Thomas and wanted to give young people, especially BIPOC teens, an opportunity to explore their beliefs through the lens of photography. Liz and I taught our first 10 week class in the Spring of 2021 online with Skill Set, a program of UNCA’s STEAM Studio. We were blown away by the depth of the students’ works and offered them prompts around subjects like climate change, racism, homophobia, and the pandemic.

We held a small exhibition of student work at Revolve Gallery. Following this class, we offered this class to a small group of students at Berry Temple in the summer of 2021 in person. In this class, we emphasized projections, digital manipulation, and collage.

I would love to see this class happen again in a larger format, where we can print large scale murals of students work and wheat paste them on buildings - Chip Thomas style, or project student images in public spaces.