Juliana Narvaez/ Contributing Writer
The year 2020 marked a significant change in the way everyone lived. With the coronavirus pandemic, the presidential elections and national protests, many individuals in the U.S. have grown to feel isolated and lost.
“Our Stories: Summer 2020” is a reflective photographic and auditory project which documented the lives of 8 FIU students and their experiences during the summer.
With a collaboration between the FIU Honors College and the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab, Andrea Fanta, Rebecca Friedman, Laura Kurtzberg, and Enrqiue Rosell came together to create this multimedia project.
This “intimate and vulnerable” look into the stories of these 8 students came about from one Student Program Coordinator for the FIU Honors College. Enrique Rosell used his passion for film, photography, and visual images and brought them together for this project.
“[I thought] it would be really cool if we could do something to document … sweetwater students … and life in sweetwater through disposable cameras and teach them about the analog process,” states Rosell.
However, with the major shift to the digital realm brought by the coronavirus pandemic, Rosell came into contact with faculty fellow Andrea Fanta at the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab. They both began brainstorming new ideas to document the summer 2020 time period.
“From my perspective, Enrique came with this great idea and has all this interest in image …,” Fanta said. “I come from an interest in sound, oral histories and the experience of hearing another person tell their experience by listening to them.”
Fanta and Rosell came together to bring this multimedia project to life. They started by giving students a disposable camera and asking them to document their lives through 27 exposures.
The project team felt it was best to use film for the photos instead of relying on digital cameras. Rosell explains why they chose to use this form of photography for this project.
“They [the students] only had 27 shots, only 27 opportunites to capture their story within the 2 week time span we gave them… really slowing down and thinking about what they’re trying to capture and [to show them] how good slowing down is sometimes.”
After taking the photos, each student was later asked to provide a written reflection and participate in a podcast to explain their experience.
Students touched upon various subjects relating to mental health, activism, interpersonal relationships and more when speaking about their involvement in the project. Although each experience is different, every story had the common theme of struggle and growth.
Rosell explains how listening to students stories impacted him in more ways than anticipated.
“It was just learning about everyone’s experience and… understanding that everyone’s going through their own thing and that was really sad sometimes but also beautiful,” Rosell states.
Fanta emphasizes the importance of stories and the ability for individuals to tell them in their own way. This project is just one in many ways that students can use their voice.
“I really see this as the founding of something much much bigger that has to do with compiling the stories and it’s … [about] being seen,” Fanta said. “Everybody has a story that is important to collect; everybody has an experience.”
“Our Stories: Summer 2020” not only looks to document student’s experiences throughout these unprecedented times, but it also serves as a reminder for students that “they are not alone,” as mentioned by Rosell.
With mental health being a major recurring theme throughout the students’ stories, as mentioned by Fanta and Rosell, they explain how this whole project served as a therapeutic remedy for not only the students, but for themselves.
“This was a therapeutic process for them… not just taking the pictures and trying to tell their story but also they were… physically sitting down and writing a reflection,” Rosell said. “That’s something we don’t do, we just go through the waves of life … [without] sitting down and thinking about… how that made you feel.”
Fanta explains how working with the students and engaging with them through their reflections led her to feel connected with them.
“Talking about someone else’s experiences; I think was therapeutic in a way and cathartic.”
Not only did the memories project allow for students and the team to bond over shared experiences, it provided everyone with a sense of human connection during a time where connecting with others seems impossible.
Rosell speaks about the bond created among the team and students because of the project.
“That was so beautiful about the project was the fact that we were so separated from everyone over the summer but this project gave students the opportunity to feel close to each other [and] to feel close to me and Andrea,” she said.
With such an intimate experience and project, Fanta explains what she hopes students will walk away with after viewing this project.
“I would say just empathy, being able to feel empathy I think that’s what drives me… everything to me comes back to sound, we are not listening [to each other] and in a way we are also not seeing each other anymore, so it’s just empathy to me.”
Fanta and Rosell are currently undergoing their continuation of this project with their second cohort of students. Both individuals state they have various ideas for different adaptations of this project for the future.
To check out “Our Stories: Summer 2020”, visit: http://ourstories.fiu.edu/. Be sure to check out their podcast available on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.
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