How do you create an equitable portrait of Los Angeles? That’s the question that ArtCenter’s “What’s Your Story?” project seeks to answer. Students in the project class, taught by Ken Marchionno and Manjari Sharma-Gaines, brought their portrait studio to Alhambra’s Lunar New Year Festival on February 8.
“It was very successful, we had a lot of really great interactions with people in the community and my students really grew a lot by having those interactions. It was actually quite a beautiful experience,” said Marchionno, adjunct professor of photography and imaging. “The idea was to go to festivals because festivals are places where cultures want to be shared, so we’re not coming in as a bunch of ArtCenter students to photograph and talk about your culture, we’re going to a place where the culture is specifically desiring to share itself.”
Most of the students in the project are in the photo department at ArtCenter, but students don’t have to be in the department to take the class. The project itself is a multi-year effort, which first took place at Leimert Park’s Juneteenth celebration in 2022. As a portrait studio, attendees were able to choose the picture they wanted to represent themselves and leave with a copy — it challenges the students to operate a professional photo booth, while also expanding their cultural knowledge and deepening their connection to local communities across the LA region.
The best place to check out the project is on Instagram (@artcenteredu) while the team works on creating a website with a searchable database. Find out more about the project at artcenter.edu.
