Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Walk-in Portrait Studio open now!



From Tuesday April 14th until Friday April 17th the Walk-in Portrait Studio on 13106 Klinger Street opens its doors from 11 AM – 4 PM. Inspired by the famous Walker Evens photograph of the License Photo Studio in New York (see picture) we set out to create a studio on Klinger Street. The purpose of the studio is to get to know the area by photographing its people and collecting their stories. Buildings are important, but in the end the people living in them make up the community.



In return of a story people get their picture taken. A week later they can pick up their photograph for free. Our first customers were the three neighbor kids Zana (15), Aliysha (13) and Brian (9) and a guy named Taras (21), who is a Ukrainian-Polish-Russian translator living on McDougall Street already his whole life. He just pulled up his car, got in and took the time to have his picture taken. Stating that he saw our advertisement all over the place. Not so many stories came out yet, only that all people we saw today feel that the neighborhood changed for the best the last couple of years. There is more activity and there are more younger people around. Charles (50) and Felicia (48), living on Gallagher Street, feel that people in the neighborhood mind their own business, but also look out for each other when necessary. They cherish that feeling very much.

Keep you posted.

The Walk-in Portrait Studio is a project by Corine Vermeulen-Smith and Femke Lutgerink.