“OpticVoices,” presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, is my first curated photography exhibit featured at the August Wilson Center. OpticVoices is a fully interactive photography exhibit where we provide the optics and you provide the voices through captioning. It is a launch pad for hard conversations about social change that need to happen in this country. Two interactive iPads are featured in the exhibition where people can go in and caption the photos. You can also go to www.opticvoices.org and add your own thoughts for dialogue between other commentators.
The exhibit came about after I had taken photos at a Black Lives Matter rally downtown Pittsburgh. At the protest, there was a small 2-year-old boy named Da’Kari who tugged his mother to hold a sign. Although he could not read the sign, he understood the importance of standing in solidarity with it.
The photo of him holding the sign stating, “I am a Human Being,” created by artist Bekezela Mguni, created the spark for the exhibit.
The exhibit opened Sept. 23, with attendance in the thousands. Schools and organizations alike have been using “OpticVoices” as a powerful tool to begin to be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations about changing the narrative of our communities.
Due to high demand, the exhibit is running until Jan. 1, 2017.
(For more information on the exhibit, visit www.trustarts.org.)
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