PROJECTS
Family Pictures Institute for Inclusive Storytelling (FPIIS) develops projects that mobilize the family photograph for social repair and fosters both academic and artistic evaluation of the power of sharing personal histories. Our projects include videos, films, national campaign initiatives, exhibitions, art and media installations, symposiums, and more. Through these approaches, we unearth obscured stories, advance community dialogue, and expand empathy.
Our projects include videos, films, national campaign initiatives, exhibitions, art and media installations, symposiums, and more. Through these approaches, we unearth obscured stories, advance community dialogue, and expand empathy.
CURRENT PROJECTS
My Mom, The Scientist & Scientists in the Family
With support from the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation, FPIIS will partner with the New York Hall of Science to launch an outreach campaign. Through a documentary film, a touring community-sharing program, and a companion digital outreach project comprised of 30 short-form videos, this project will engage communities traditionally underrepresented in STEM. It will also support research on culturally-responsive strategies to advance educational practices in informal STEM learning at science centers, museums, and beyond.
Storytelling and Community Wellbeing: Healing Our Communities Through Communal Narrative Change Symposium
On May 9-10, we will host a colloquium examining the role of communal narratives—the stories we tell ourselves—in contextualizing our individual and collective relationships to our modern social, cultural and political systems. Using a multidisciplinary approach, in conversation with scholars and practitioners, we will explore the use of storytelling and narrative change in addressing the social determinants of community well-being and hopefully identify concrete actions that can be taken individually and collectively to heal what ails us as a society, culture, country and world. This colloquium is supported by Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center.
Family Pictures Hubs
Family Pictures Hubs are deeply localized, long-term community projects. Our hubs use community-photo sharing events to activate the development of a public community archive and archive-inspired cultural and educational initiatives. We provide tools for a community to come together, share their stories, and have a voice in how they can preserve a more inclusive account of their history. These projects are developed collaboratively with a network of community organizations. We work with these organizations to refine the aims, methods, and outcomes of each hub, ensuring that they resonate with the needs and interests of their community.
PAST PROJECTS
Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow
Our Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow was a transmedia community engagement project that aimed to create multicultural understanding and a sense of empathy among people of differing backgrounds. We used film, video, live events, social media, and workshops as part of an integrated toolkit designed to break down barriers and inculcate dialogues across cultures and between generations. Ordinary vernacular images that people create everyday were the tools we used to celebrate the connections, shared values, and common experiences that unite us all in our basic humanity.
This project featured the award-winning documentary film, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, which looks at contemporary artists probing the recesses of the American family album by interrogating images of stories suppressed, forgotten, and lost. It is the first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present.
Family Pictures USA, Season One
Family Pictures USA is a nationally broadcast PBS documentary-style series, which was broadcast to over 5.3 million viewers in 2019. It journeys through a rapidly changing landscape where the foundations of a familiar and idealized “America” are being transformed. Through sharing family photographs, ordinary Americans discover their hidden family histories and meet unknown relatives and old family friends — introducing us to a more nuanced and diverse story of our common history, shared present, and evolving future. Family Pictures USA mines this rich treasure trove of personal narratives and reveals roots, connections, and provocative parallels that surprise us and illuminate the path toward a new America for the 21st Century.
Mother, Bethel, Harlem, USA with Hunter College
Co-created by artist and filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris and students from the Hunter College IMA/MFA program, Mother, Bethel, Harlem, USA was an interactive exhibition at Hunter East Harlem Gallery. The artists created works inspired by the family photo album, archiving practices, and their local community, Harlem and East Harlem. Drawing on what would become Family Pictures’ archival methodology, they remixed and expanded the archive within the gallery space. The result is an investigation of family artifacts, the connection between photography and memory, and narratives that are deeply entrenched in their local community.
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