Community The Way to Wanakena | Where Hope Finds Home

Kristin V. Rehder, Tuji, Ethiopia, from Where Hope Finds Home, 2015

In my photo documents on community I take color digital portraits of my subjects looking directly into the camera. I photograph in natural light within environments familiar to my subjects, and I like to work in communities of which I am a member. My documents are informed by social activist photography, including Civil Rights-era photography, and by visual ethnography. I continue to explore photographically the "beloved community" concepts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose focus on the dignity of each human being influences my portraits. My images and texts ask certain questions, such as: Does encountering someone eye-to-eye through a photographic portrait and biography make the viewer more likely to want to know an individual and to work together for the future of a shared community?