In July 2015, I worked in collaboration with Jubilee Arts and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts to make portraits of Baltimore City youth employed in the Art @ Work summer mural program. Jubilee Arts is a non-profit that provides arts classes and other services to the residents of the Sandtown-Winchester, Upton, and surrounding neighborhoods that were at the epicenter of the recent unrest.
The Art @ Work teams were guided by mentor artists and community input to create a series of murals in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. The images in this exhibition are from our time together, during which I built a rapport with both the teams and individuals, and worked with the participants to make their portraits. As I photographed, the images were downloaded from my high-resolution camera to my linked phone, which was shared with the subjects as we discussed the nature of the representation. They would frequently transmit the photographs to their own devices and social platforms. 8x10 prints were distributed to the participants at the conclusion of our time together.
This series is a part of an ongoing long-term engagement with the neighborhoods and communities that make up our city.