LaNija Brown graduated from UVa in 2022. She was a Perkins Fellow and frequent attender of Vintage Lunch as well as a leader in OneWay during her time at UVa.
The picture above is a screenshot of a jamboard from our final PhotoVoice session. We each had time to consider all the photos we’d taken from previous meetings and create a larger narrative from them. You can see questions that came up for us as a group as we brainstormed.
Q: Tell me about your compiled slide. What do the photos mean to you and how do they all connect to each other?
LaNija: The photos in my compiled slide tell a story of transition. As I was participating in this project, I was traveling solo in the American Southwest the summer after graduating from UVA, breaking out of what was expected of me before settling down in a city. These photos mean redirection, freedom, and rediscovering who I am outside of who I was conditioned to be.
LaNija: I took the first photo in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was the first city I went to on my trip. Reaching out to the sky showed how my relationship with God was integral to the entire process of being by myself and traveling.
LaNija: I took the second photo in San Diego, and it’s of public transportation. This was the moment when I truly felt like a fish out of water. I grew up in a really rural area where there was no public transport. This was my first time on the west coast, in a big city by myself, and in this moment I felt truly alone and independent.
LaNija: The next picture is of me and my boyfriend, who was the main person I was talking to throughout the whole travel experience. My relationship with him got much stronger. In many ways I felt like I was doing it with him and for him. He’s never been to the west coast either and I knew I needed to try being on my own in order to really appreciate being with him. He was also my motivation to not stop early when things got tough.
LaNija: The plate photo came from the last week of college before I graduated. I was in the Black campus ministry called OneWay and they made superlatives for the students about to graduate. My superlative, “most likely to get mad at you for not valuing yourself,” meant a lot to me because I gained a reputation for calling people out when they weren’t valuing themselves, but I wasn’t able to do the same for myself–I was the first person to put myself through the mud whenever I made a mistake, or to sacrifice sleep for an assignment. The superlative was a wake up call for me–I needed to treat myself with the same value I encouraged in others. The biggest thing I learned from the experience was to value my dreams and strive for experiences that would build me up as who I want to be and not who everyone expects me to be.
LaNija: The final picture represents the end of my transition stage. My compiled slide is almost like a timeline, now that I look at it: the one on the left is the beginning and the one on the right is the end. I’m currently apartment hunting in Charlotte, North Carolina–this photo is a screenshot of one apartment I was looking at. This really signifies a new beginning and a bookend to my journey this past summer. I'm trying to take everything that I learned from the experience of traveling and use what I’ve learned about myself to figure out what I’ll be doing next. I’m looking forward to starting a new chapter in my life, and also recognize that the story is on-going.
Q: What questions/grey areas did your photos/compiled slide bring up for you?
The compiled slide brings up a lot of thoughts about discerning my future. Where’s my community outside of my boyfriend? Where do I see myself going? What is my vision for my life? It also brought up some questions about my writing: how do I express myself? I’ve always said that my writing is integral to who I am, but I haven’t leaned into it very much before. How can I make my writing an on-going practice?
Q: What did you discover about yourself, your community, or your life through PhotoVoice?
I discovered that I have a story that is worth sharing. Before photovoice, most of the things I had gone through, if they weren’t super shocking or impressive, didn’t seem profound enough for anyone to want to hear it. I learned that I do have a story that is worth sharing and there’s value to it even if I don’t always see it myself.
“[Through Essential PhotoVoice] I discovered that I have a story that is worth sharing.”
Q: What question would you like to propose to TH blog readers?
What is something that you never thought was worth sharing and why? What are the mundane experiences you don’t see value in and why? What criteria are you using to measure your own story, and where does it come from?
How do we find and build community during transition?
How can you push yourself out of your comfort zone in a way that is identity-forming? How can you commit to being uncomfortable (for example, like I was when attending events alone during my travels) while still being safe?
Q: What is your biggest takeaway from the PhotoVoice experience? How was it overall?
My biggest takeaway from Essential Photovoice is that as different as everyone’s stories can be and no matter how lonely someone might feel, there is always a point of alignment and connection. Just like how puzzle pieces are all different shapes but come together to make a big beautiful coherent picture, so did our 6 stories as we participated in this cohort. I just wished it could have been in-person instead of over Zoom; I can just imagine people gathering at Common Grounds to talk about their photos and share a meal!