Six by Three

This portfolio was presented as an undergraduate junior thesis in 2007.

These photographs represent a year in the life of Menelik, a six year old boy from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. They also represent my own ongoing struggle as a photographer to understand what it means to tell another person’s story in images.

When I began this project in the summer of 2006, I was hoping that it would allow me to overcome my fear of photographing people up close. During the year, as I grew more comfortable pointing my camera at intimate moments, I also became aware of a new problem: What entitled me to choose the story line? With so many facets of this child’s life, which story should I tell — and from whose perspective?

In the book form of this project, I resolved that problem (at least for the moment) by asking Menelik and his mother, Lashon, to create their own narratives using my pictures. After their chapters, I added my own. In this excerpted portfolio, you will find images chosen from all three versions of the story: Perhaps in their totality, Menelik himself — son, boy, six year old — appears before us?