The Cville People Project

Melanie, the marriage equality supporter

I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised to see someone with a clerical collar at the rally for marriage equality, since in my experience, many devout Christians are not particularly tolerant of homosexuality. Melanie, however, is not only tolerant, she is affirming of the LGBTQ community. She is the pastor of the Sojourners United Church of Christ in Charlottesville, a post she assumed about a year-and-a-half ago. She told me that one of the reasons why she was happy to accept their job offer was precisely because it is an “open and affirming” church, which means that one of their basic principles is to welcome people of all ages, races, genders, and sexual orientations as full members of their community.

Melanie has been serving churches for almost twenty years, and she knew that she was called to do so even as a child. She told me that when she was a little girl, she would go out into the pastures on her family farm in Nebraska and preach to the cows, occasionally scolding them for their behavior and exhorting them to lead more righteous lives. Social justice issues are very important to her, and in addition to supporting the local LGBTQ community, she has a strong commitment to reproductive justice.

One thing that I would add is that in this portrait, she might look a bit severe, but in our conversation, she was quick to smile, and she seemed positively full of joy. I haven’t seen her preach, but I would imagine that she is really good at connecting with her congregation.

Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA

Amy, the marriage equality supporter

One of the most interesting people I met at the rally for marriage equality was Amy, who spoke quite movingly about some of the challenges she has faced in her life due to her sexual orientation. Amy told me that she realized that she was a lesbian when she was fifteen and fell in love for the first time, with another girl. She faced a lot of opposition from her family, since their religious views couldn’t, and still cannot, accept homosexuality. “You can’t be a lesbian,” many of her friends and family said, “because you’re so feminine!” Her mother still has not come to grips with Amy’s sexual orientation, and their relationship has been seriously damaged because of it.

Like many young people struggling to find their way, she tried to be straight. She married a man and tried to make the marriage work, but it failed. She tried again with another man, with the same result. They had a child together, and Amy told me that she is grateful that her second husband is a kind man who has learned to accept her as she is. She said that they get along well, which is a very good thing for their child. Finally, after their divorce in 2008, she was able to embrace her sexual orientation and stop trying to fit into a mold that just didn’t work for her. I can’t imagine how difficult her journey has been, and I can only hope that a day will come when people like Amy will feel that they can be who they were made to be, without having to spend decades of their lives trying to be someone they simply aren’t.

Last March, Amy formed the Charlottesville Pride Community Network, an organization whose aim is to provide support and advocacy for the local LGBTQ community. Shortly after its creation, her group held the first ever Charlottesvile Pride Festival. Followers of my project will have already seen some of the portraits I made that day, including one my personal favorites, the portrait of Reigna Beaux, the birthday girl.

Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA

Brian, the marriage equality supporter

This past week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments on two cases that have garnered quite a bit of attention, as they both have to do with the issue of gay marriage. On Tuesday, a rally in support of marriage equality was held on the Downtown Mall, followed by a demonstration in front of the Federal Building on the corner of Ridge and Main. Quite a few people turned out to support the cause, and Brian was one of them.

Brian told me that he doesn’t consider himself to be a political activist and that his reasons for supporting marriage equality are both political and personal. Like the rest of those involved in the rally, he believes strongly in the idea of equal rights for all people, regardless of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. As a gay man who would like to be able to marry his fiancé and have that marriage recognized the same way that heterosexual marriages are, he also has a personal interest in the outcome of the Supreme Court decisions.

Brian said that he has known since he was very young that he is gay, and it was difficult for his family when he officially came out at the age of sixteen because they are quite religious. He and his fiancé Ben have known each other for a long time, but they have been a couple for for about a year-and-a-half. They’ve bought a house together, and they are committed to spending their lives together, hopefully as a married couple.

Since Brian is a visual artist himself — he’s a graphic designer, illustrator, and photographer — he appreciated my project but told me that he wasn’t used to being on the other side of the camera. For my part, I was glad to be at the rally to show my support of equal rights, and I’m grateful that he was willing to participate.

Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA

Erika, the international student

This entry represents a first of sorts: it’s the first time that I’ve conducted one of my interviews en español. As I was walking on the Downtown Mall, I saw a young woman with a hand-made sign that said “¡Ayúdanos África!” on it. I stopped to ask her what her cause was, and she explained in quite halting English that she was raising funds for an HIV prevention program in Mozambique. She seemed kind of uncomfortable, and she hadn’t had any luck with her efforts up to that point. When I asked more about the project, she had some difficulty explaining it, so I asked her again in Spanish, and she immediately relaxed.

It turns out that Erika is a student in international relations in Argentina, and she is traveling to a few places in the U.S. — Washington, D.C., New York, and a couple of cities in Virginia — to fund her participation in a project organized by the Institute for International Cooperation and Development. She’ll be spending six months in Mozambique providing education on HIV and AIDS issues, then she’ll head back to school in Argentina and begin a year-long term in which she will write journalistic pieces about her experiences in Africa to share with both the organization and the wider community.

While she was happy to chat about her project with someone with whom she could speak freely, she was a somewhat less sure about participating in my project. She was a little nervous about being photographed, but when I pulled up my project blog on my smartphone to show her what I was up to, she agreed and kindly walked with me around the corner to let me make a portrait.

Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA

Brynne, the pole artist

Those of you who have been following my project will have noticed by now that I’ve met a number of my portrait subjects at the Mudhouse, my favorite Charlottesville cafe. I think that this probably says something about me — I do love a well-made macchiato, I must admit — but it also speaks to the fact that the Mudhouse baristas are a pretty interesting group. Brynne works there part-time, and when I saw her gorgeous purple hair, I knew that I wanted to add her to my project.  Fortunately, she agreed.

The first thing that you might notice about Brynne, after the hair, is that she has quite an athletic build. I wasn’t surprised, then, when she told me that she is an aerial artist. Brynne performs in a wide variety of disciplines, including silks, trapeze, and the lyra, but her favorite form is pole dancing.

Pole dancing, for those of you who don’t know, is a performance art that represents a combination of dance and gymnastics that involves dancing and acrobatics around a vertical pole. Competitive pole dancing has grown significantly over the past decade, and I had the opportunity to see a demonstration of the art on the Downtown Mall a year or two ago when the Phoenix Dance Studio, where Brynne studies, held a public performance. Brynne has been a dancer for a long time and competed in Irish Step-Dancing beginning in middle school, but when she saw someone pole dancing three years ago, she was intrigued and decided to study it herself.

Brynne has had some success, finishing third in the Amateur Division of the Ms Virginia Pole Dance America Competition last year. You can see some videos of her performances on her Youtube channel. I promise that you will be amazed, as I was, at her strength, grace, and artistry. To get a sense of a number of the aerial arts in one video, I recommend “Sail,” a routine performed by a group of dancers from the Phoenix Studio.

When she’s not working at the Mudhouse or training at the studio, Brynne is finishing up her degree at the University of Virginia. Brynne was a biology major, and she has had some of her neuroscience research published in scholarly journals; last year, though, she changed her major to Women, Sexuality, and Gender Studies. After graduation, she’s hoping to follow her dream of being a professional circus artist.

Sophia, the Peace Corps volunteer

The deadline for obtaining enough signatures to get candidates on the ballot for this Fall’s elections is approaching, and for the past couple of weeks, there have been volunteers on the Downtown Mall trying to ensure that Terry McAuliffe makes the cut. Sophia was one of the people with a clipboard this weekend, and when she approached me to ask if I was a registered voter, I told her that I was and then promptly asked to photograph her. As it happens, she and her roommate had stumbled upon my project blog the night before, so she knew who I was and agreed to participate.

Sophia is a fourth-year student at the University of Virginia, and not surprisingly, she studies political science. As she explained, she’s very interested in the idea of community, and at the end of the day, politics are about making decisions that both express the values of and have a huge impact on communities. She has put her beliefs into practice by volunteering on the nascent McAuliffe campaign, and she worked on Tim Kaine’s campaign in the past. She also does volunteer work through at UVa’s Madison House, working with immigrants by teaching ESL and as part of the Migrant Aid project.

When I asked about her unique hair color, she told me that she had it dyed a couple of weeks ago at her stylist’s urging and that it has garnered a fair amount of attention. She said that she decided to cut loose a bit because she’ll be graduating in May and may not have the freedom to go for such a wild hairdo later on.

Sophia has been accepted into the Peace Corps, and she’ll find out where she’ll be assigned sometime soon. She’s hoping to go somewhere in Latin America, but she told me that she’ll happily go wherever they send her.

Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA

Andi, the public health advocate

There are two ways that I select potential participants in my project. Sometimes, I’ll just be out wandering around with my camera, and either I’ll see someone who looks interesting or get involved in a conversation with someone who shares something interesting about themselves, and I’ll ask to photograph them. Recently, I’ve also started to contact people out of the blue because I’ve read an article about them or because of their involvement with an organization or business I like.

Last week, I saw a piece about St. Baldrick’s Day, an annual charity event that raises money for children’s cancer treatment and research. I went to the webpage, found information about a couple of participants, and emailed them. Andi was one of the people I contacted, and when she wrote back, she told me that she was one of the organizers of the event but wouldn’t be getting shaved this year. In the resulting email exchange, she told me that she has another cause, though, and the more she told me about it, the more it became apparent that it was a story that I wanted to share here.

Andi is a graduate student in the Master’s in Public Health program at the University of Virginia, and when she was an undergrad Anthropology major, she and another student started a health education and water filtration project in Guatemala. It all began three years ago, when Andi participated in a brief study abroad research project and realized the impact that water pollution had on the small rural communities she visited. She managed to win a Davis Prize for Peace, which provided her with $10,000 to initiate the project, and she partnered with local organizations in Guatemala to get it up and running. You can learn more about the project by checking out an article published in UVa Today, but the gist of it is that Andi and her partners provide education on sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and the use of water filters; once people finish the educational program, they are given water filters to use to purify their water.

Andi will finish her studies in May, and when I asked her what she plans on doing next, she told me that she’s not entirely sure. She’s going to travel for a while — she has a one-way airplane ticket to Europe, she said — but it will certainly focus on NGO work on public health issues.