Verde Smoke

I have to admit, I procrastinated a bit around building the rough draft of my final photo essays.  I had all the pieces (in fact, too many pieces) and ideas, but I felt like I was back in high school again, facing down the insurmountable beast of a final paper of which I had too much I wanted to say.  Usually, once I get into working, it flows easily once I get started but it’s taking that first leap.  With this project, the themes I wanted to cover and the enigma that is Lawrence’s identity seemed like a black hole, that I’ve circling around like a hesitant but curious animal.

Like a bit of divine providence, a spark of motivation fell in my lap.  Fellow MIT@Lawrence researcher Anne Schwieger asked if I wanted to help out with a day of workshops at MIT she was planning for a group of Lawrence middle school youth.  As you may remember, working with youth doing media and technology projects is one of my favorite things to do.  SO, I had all these photography books out from the library, cameras available from department, and hundreds of my own photos printed out in color…all that easily equals a digital photography workshop. 

Because of bus delays, I ended up with the same group of youth all day.  I walked them through a condensed version of how to look at photos of landscape, thinking about composition but also about language and stories they tell.  Then I spread out all my little photos on the table and asked “What do you think? Did I capture Lawrence?”  Many of them recognized the places I photographed but said I missed the right spots.  One boy was amazed that I had captured the gas station by his house when the gas prices were so much lower.  One other girl was adamant that I should have taken photos of the library.  And yes, a few boys sat back and refused to identify ANY photos (mine or from the books of Callahan, Lange, and Vergara) that were interesting.  I had them pick one, tape it up on the white board, and tell me a little about what they liked/disliked about it (a mini critique was born). 

I quietly took out my audio recorder and hit record.  The youth realized it was on, protested a bit, then tried out their singing voices to watch the levels change.  And then I asked them to talk about Lawrence as a place, to describe how the places and characters in my photos showed the Lawrence that’s in their mind’s eye.  They spoke, upon my prompting, about how they consider the past of Lawrence, namely the mills, in terms of what they see today and what they hope for in the future.

After lunch, we took the cameras and I challenged them to capture the landscape of MIT.  The youth were exuberant to get out of buildings, to run around the lawn, to sit in a classroom, to see the Stata building and sit inside the Media Lab.  We tried to look at most of the photos before they boarded the buses for home and I was amazed.  Yes, there were posed photos of themselves and silly snapshots of MIT students, but there were also snippets of where I spent most days from a very different angle.

And I realized I had my new storylines for my essay.