Sometimes a community is best seen through the eyes of its young people. The winning submissions of the museum’s student photography contest, “Athens through Our Eyes,” show the truth of this statement and are on display in the museum’s Education Center through November 30 during regular hours. This contest invited local teens to capture their community experience and respond to the theme “What does living in Athens in 2022 look like to you?”
Callan Steinmann, the museum’s curator of education, and Sage Kincaid, associate curator of education, selected 21 photographs for display in the museum. Said Steinmann, “We were looking for submissions that were interesting and creative responses to the overall theme, and to the question we posed in our call for artists.”
In the winning submissions, students shared moments with loved ones and unique glimpses of iconic Athens locales. Steinmann notes that community was also a theme across submissions: “Many of the photographs dealt with common themes of friendship and the importance of family and community. Some of the artists also talked about UGA and its looming presence in town but wanted to express that there’s more to Athens than just the university and football.”
The contest accompanied the exhibition “Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund,”(opens in new tab) the first large-scale survey of the Do-Good Fund’s photography collection. The student submissions reflected the themes of that exhibition in many ways.
“My favorite part of the exhibition is how it shows us so many different perspectives, which I think echoes the works in the Do Good exhibition as well,” said Steinmann. “There are as many ways to be ‘southern’ as there are southerners, and I think you could say the same for teenagers in Athens.”
The opening reception for the contest took place on November 12 during the museum’s Family Day and was part of UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts(opens in new tab). This Family Day also celebrated the Do Good Fund exhibition.
You can view the winning submissions in a virtual exhibition on our website.(opens in new tab)
Authored by:
Maggie Dukes
