I want you to know

"I want you to know" is a portrait project that grew out of the Sonke Gender Justice Network PhotoVoice Project (check out the students' work here). After students at Mpathesitha High School had spent weeks documenting their communities, we wanted them to have a chance to say something about themselves. Teenagers very rarely get the chance to tell adults how they see themselves and how they wish to be seen--all too often, they are the vehicles for someone else's ideas or ambitions, or they are ignored completely. This is unfortunate, not only for the teens themselves, but also for adults, who lose the benefit of the unique wisdom that only adolescents have--a willingness to dream and a sense that they are just on the edge of making their dreams come true. It is cliche--though not untrue--that we should listen to children's ambitions and help them achieve them. But it is also true that we should learn from their boldness, and remember who we were determined to be at just that moment in our own lives.

The process for this project was that I asked each student to write a statement conveying how they want to be seen and what they want their community to know about them. Then I took their portraits while they talked to me about their ideas. I took several shots of each student and asked them to choose which one they liked the most. The portraits were displayed at the PhotoVoice exhibit in their high school, along with their statements.