This project began on a whim when I was out on my bike in search of a story. I happened upon some kids, on the street adjacent to a low-income housing project near my home. They were trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk because it was so hot. What was initially a funny story about kids being kids pulled me into a study of the lived reality inside these subsidized communities where daily life is shaped by tight spaces, shared struggles and at times unexpected beauty and joy. I felt immediately drawn back into this world in which I grew up. I saw myself in these kids.
GROWING UP HERE
Over the past few years, I’ve been going back to the same families and the same clusters of kids. In their play I witness a constant, intense swing of emotions between joy and anger. Laughter explodes one moment - conflict and overwhelming angst the next. These extreme emotional swings are responses to the pressures they carry and the tensions they feel at home - the lack of control that shapes their daily lives. I feel deeply for them and relate on every level to what these kids are experiencing. What strikes me most is how, even in the chaos, their bonds are real, fierce, and human. They fight, they forgive; they protect one another in ways that feel familiar to me. Their connections remind me of the friendships that carried me through my own childhood, the ones built not on perfect circumstances but on shared struggle and shared hope.
This project is about capturing the raw emotional landscape of growing up in these environments: the volatility, the resilience, the tenderness, and the unspoken understanding that forms between children who share it all.
Through this work I honor their experience and process my own.
