The week before Thanksgiving, the girls and I had the pleasure of hosting Laura Brunow Miner in class. Laura is a designer at Pinterest, and as the founder of the fantastic Pictory Mag knows a thing or two about creating photo stories.
We looked at Jane Justice Leibrock’s wonderful blog May I Admire You?, to get a feel for what a street fashion interview can be. Then we talked about the parts of ourselves that are visible in the clothes that we wear, and how adornment can tell its own story. I loved the details that emerged: a favorite color, a style of dress that would have been frowned upon in one’s home country. Clothing that shows our travels, our senses of humor, and the components of our daily lives (like Laura, mom to a newborn and a toddler, needing to wear shirts or dresses that button down the front while she’s still breastfeeding).
She taught the girls camera technique and some tricks to get great shots, and we reviewed interview techniques and generated questions that would help us get at a story. Then we sent the girls and their cameras out into the world. We’d hoped to do this out on Telegraph Avenue (Humans of Temescal, anyone?), but the first rainy day in weeks meant that busting the drought took precedence over the amazing mustache photos we would have gotten outside the Temescal Alley Barber Shop in the last weeks of November).
So we stayed on campus – take a gander at Humans of OIHS instead! They came back with some great shots; a sampling of my favorites are below. More details on the stories behind them will be coming this week; when those are finished, you can keep up with them under the photo tag here.
As ever, as always – these girls crack me up and astonish me with ease. The stories they gathered about their classmates will be as unique as the students themselves. In the meantime, they say a picture’s worth a thousand words: enjoy.
Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong is a transmedia storyteller whose work is oriented toward dialogue, connection, dislocation, and movement. The child of Ghanaian immigrants, she has lived in eight cities/four countries in the past ten years. She is currently in her final year of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Mills College, where she is the prose fellow in Narrative Writing and Community Engagement.
On Wednesday, we had the final session of Walk In My Shoes. It was fun and playful and bittersweet, and culminated (like all the best things) in a party full of food, warmth, and sharing. But before that, we did this exquisite corpse exercise, which was easily the highlight of my day. I’ve edited it lightly for spelling and punctuation, but otherwise this is straight from me and the girls to you.
