Seeing Pittsburgh Project
From Tiffani Emig
I am the curator at Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area. We are working on a project titled Seeing Pittsburgh, which will showcase Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods through the eyes of their residents. The project involves finding around six residents from diverse backgrounds (in terms of age, race, gender, years in the community, etc.) in each participating community to volunteer as amateur photographers. Rivers of Steel will provide each volunteer with a camera and ask them to answer the question “What makes South Point Breeze unique?” through photography. We are not looking for people who are great photographers, just a variety of people who know their community. The project will result in an exhibit at the Bost Building beginning in July 2008 and, if funding allows, a book, video podcasts, and cell phone tours of each participating neighborhood.
In order to reach people in each neighborhood, we are partnering with neighborhood organizations. We would like Point Breeze to be one of the neighborhoods represented in the project, if this is something you are willing and able to be involved in. All I am asking from the organizations is to talk to people in the neighborhood about volunteering and send a list of their names and contact information. I am attaching a more detailed project outline that can be distributed to potential volunteers.
Project Summary
Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area is challenging your neighborhood and other neighborhoods throughout the Pittsburgh area to document the things that define your community. The documentation will be primarily in the form of photographs taken by community members, though some photographers might also be asked to be interviewed about life in their community. The end result will be an exhibit of photographs and stories from each community, to be held at the Bost Building in Homestead from July 1, 2008, to January 31, 2009. If funding allows, a book and a video podcast series will be published to supplement the exhibit.
Details
For the project, we are looking for volunteers from your community to act as photojournalists. We encourage both those with prior photographic experience and those less comfortable with a camera to participate. As a volunteer, you will be asked to take photographs documenting their answers to the following questions:
What defines your neighborhood? What makes it unique?
We are interested in the good, the bad, the old, the new, the big, the small, the physical, the emotional……
1) You will also be asked to keep a simple log of each photo they take, noting the exposure number and the subject of each photo. Rivers of Steel will provide one disposable camera to each photographer for use on the project, though you are welcome to use your own camera (film or digital). All photographs should be completed by the end of December. Rivers of Steel staff members Tiffani Emig and Ron Baraff will collect your film and cameras for developing.
2) After film has been developed, a selection committee will review the photographs and choose approximately 10 photographs from each community to submit for the exhibit. The photos will be chosen based more on their subject matter and their depiction of the most encompassing view of the neighborhood, and less on their artistic quality.
3) Rivers of Steel would also like the opportunity to interview several of the volunteers from each community to get a better sense of the neighborhood and the photographs taken. The interviews will be schedule separately and will likely take place after the first of the year.
4) The resulting photographs will be framed and mounted, along with quotes from the interviews, for the Seeing Pittsburgh exhibit. If funding allows, we would also like to produce a documentary from the interviews that will run on a large screen television during the exhibit, to help visitors better understand the meaning behind the photographs.
Our goal for the project is to show the character of each neighborhood as seen by its residents, not by an outside entity.
About Rivers of Steel
The mission of the Rivers of Steel National and State Heritage Area is to conserve, interpret, promote and manage the historic, cultural, natural and recreational sources of steel and related industries in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and to develop the use of these resources so that they may contribute to the revitalization of the region. Find out more at www.riversofsteel.com
For more information, contact Tiffani Emig, Curator of Collections, at 412-464-4020 Ext.22, or temig@riversofsteel.com.