Known as “Collar City” because of its roots in textile
production, the City of Troy in Rensselaer County has a storied history as one
of the most prosperous cities in American history. Through much of the 19th
Century and into the early 20th Century the city was home to thriving shirt
factories and steel mills. Its position along the Hudson River made Troy a key
point for meat and vegetable shipments from Vermont to New York City. A significant
source of the city’s wealth came from the steel industry. Ore and coal were shipped from the Midwest on the Erie Canal to
Troy, where the materials were processed before making their way down the Hudson
to New York City. Today, early examples of the nation’s first steel structural supports
and iron storefronts can be found in the city’s architecture. Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, one of the best engineering
schools in the country, was founded there in 1824.
Photographer Brenda Kenneally’s exhibit Upstate Girls: Unravelling Collar City tells
a much different story. The city that was once a shining start of the Industrial
Revolution has been hit hard by industrial decline. By 2013, the City’s poverty
rate had reached 28% and unemployment hit 8.3%. The Troy residents pictured in Upstate Girls are young women from
families who have been left behind by another kind of revolution.
During an artist talk on August 26 at
Hudson Hall in Hudson, Kenneally
introduced the audience to her project that documents a group of teenagers in poverty-stricken
Troy as they move in and out of apartments, serve prison sentences, have
babies, and live through addiction, broken families, and failing relationships.
In her short film “Blood and Jelly” she shows families celebrating births, eating
food, and living lives in their homes. The babies are being born to teenage
girls, the food is almost entirely highly processed, and the apartments are
filthy and disorganized. Children are unclothed and adults wear pajamas all day.
Kenneally talked about the prevalence of sugary and salty foods and how their addictive
nature keeps people like her subjects placated.
Also present was
writer Linda Tirado who, along with Kenneally, recounted her experience living in
poverty and how addiction contributes to the overwhelming prevalence of chemically
manufactured food in the diets of poor people. “The addiction manifests itself even when you
don’t realize it,” said Tirado.
Kenneally and Tirado
responded to the common why-do-poor-people-eat-so-much-junk-food reaction to
their work with the fact that poor people, especially those living in food
deserts, and must choose between terrible and worse. The two women recounted a
shared experience of the social backlash to their work. Their willingness to
share the stories of the poor opened their subjects, and themselves, to vile
reactions and judgement from viewers. They talked about how we demoralize lower
classes for how they comfort themselves and how at the same time they’re not
able to defend themselves. Part of the problem is that there exists insufficient
language to help us talk about how little people exist on. Tirado explained
these two tracks of society were as firmly in place in the past as they are today,
and she doubted that people could have an honest discussion in the current political
climate when people are consumed with fighting about what’s fake news and what
is not.
Kenneally’s work was
displayed as part of the LightField festival of “lens-based art” spotlighting
social issues and generating discussion about the role of visual storytelling,
as well as including diverse participation from the community of gentrifying community
of Hudson. The Hudson Hall displays were part of the JUST THE FACTS exhibit investigating
marginalized people left behind by technology and globalization.
Kenneally’s photos,
of survival and resilience, will be released in a 300-page book in 2018. She
established A Little Creative Class, Inc., a nonprofit, to benefit people like
those pictured in her work. The mentorship program targets youths ages 18-21 who
live outside of New York City, offering them opportunities to explore art and
help them reach their full potential and find economic self-sufficiency in an
increasingly idea-based economy. The program removes youths, whose capacity was
diminished from the beginning, from the daily drama, scarcity and violence of
their neighborhoods to expose them to a drama-free environment where they can explore
art and science. The organization’s website outlines the science behind child
development and creativity:
Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules,” the Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports.
Some of the Little Creative Class participants were present at the artist talk and spoke about their experience. Participants who return to their communities are encouraged to act as mentors, bringing knowledge, connections, and tools to new faces.
Brenda Kenneally: www.brendakenneally.com
A Little Creative
Class, Inc.: www.alittlecreativeclass.org
LightField Festival
of Photography & Multimedia Art: www.lightfield.vu
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