This past Friday, South Side in Focus, a University of Chicago student organization that aims to share and amplify the voices of South Side residents through public art exhibits, held a gallery opening and performance at Currency Exchange Café in Washington Park. The event, titled “As We See It,” featured photos (below) taken on disposable cameras by students from Imagine Englewood If… and the Chicago Youth Programs in Washington Park. The photos allowed the students to document daily life in their households and neighborhoods. Interviews with the student photographers and a video made by students from Englewood accompanied the images. Students also performed in an open mic event (above), sharing poetry that reflected on life in their neighborhoods. Find some of the students’ work reproduced here.
Top, Unique, a student from Englewood, reads poetry discussing life in her neighborhood. On her left is Jeanne Lieberman, a UofC student who helped organize the event, and on her right is Monique Roundtree from Washington Park, who also read her poetry.
