The Detroit Youth Action Plan is an initiative from Detroit Teen HYPE. Funded by a grant from the U.S. government’s Office of Population Affairs, the program helps young people in Detroit hone their leadership skills. I was commissioned to create portraits of the young program participants.
For this series, I invoked the visual language of futurism, superhero key art, and New Deal-era WPA posters.
There is a cultural pressure to smile in photographs. In this series, we ignored this expectation.
Instead, I worked with participant to draw out an expression that by their own report felt comfortable. In doing so, I believe we captured the full-range of qualities necessary to a leader:
Joy. Resolve. Confidence. Doubt.
During my standard pre-shoot banter, I asked one school-aged participant to name her favorite class.
"International relations."
As a native Detroiter, I can barely express what it meant to make images of these exceptional young people.
That they seek to lead proves they already do.