Award-winning photographer featured at CDS

There's no place like home. There truly isn't. When I think back to my sleepy hometown in Indiana, I realize how the Hoosiers built my sense of community, and how the landscape built my sense of home.

Center of Documentary Studies exhibit "City Under One Roof" by 2013 Lange-Taylor Prize Winner Jen Kinney captures this sentiment that human lives and their stories are equally intertwined within their surrounding space.

In this exhibit, Kinney combines photographs and writing to tell the story of the 200 - person fishing community of Whittier, Alaska. Specifically, Kinney focuses on how the people of Whittier identify themselves and their livelihoods within the context of a small, isolated town in southern Alaska.

According to Kinney, after serving as a military base, Whittier evolved by "constructing, altering and destroying" infrastructure that surrounded an austere military post. While walking through her exhibit, Kinney pointed out to me a photograph of a tunnel in the town that polarized many of its residents. The tunnel was renovated to increase access to the town and bolster economic growth. However, many citizens viewed the addition of the tunnel as something done to them, not for them. "It wasn't a matter of convenience but a matter of identity," explained Kinney.

Many people from many walks of life have continued to change the meaning of identity in Whittier. Kinney wanted to capture this evolving sense of communal identity. Interestingly, Whittier has attracted a growing Samonian population--so much so that they have their own separate church services.

"People identify really closely with space...the thing about a town that small is that half of the town is employed just by keeping the town running...keep the tunnel going, the teachers, the police, the people that clear the snow...you get this feeling that every individual is important to surviving," said Kinney.

The stories Kinney brings to life are those that illustrate how the constant changes and renovations of the physical world pose an equal renovation in people and their stories. "The writing was a way to tell their [the people of Whittier's] stories in their own words," Kinney said. "The images rely heavily on my aesthetic, but people told me a lot of stories about how they came to be here and why they stayed, which I told through writing."

Nevertheless, despite the ways in which Whittier has physically evolved, there still remains a need for youthful inspiration. Kinney motioned to a photograph of a child's birthday party. The child is one of the 36 children in the town. While some children may grow up to call Whittier their home, many grow up and leave Whittier because the town itself cannot foster opportunities for higher education and ambition. The town is slowly losing the youth that often invigorate and innovate a community.