The What’s Your Story? project works toward an equitable portrait of our time by setting up vendor style photo booths at cultural festivals. Producing images and prints on the spot, like the early itinerant photographers, we come to you, and you leave with a photo. And you can also enter your photo into a collection representing the Los Angeles Basin.

The What’s Your Story? class is a mashup, a mixture of carnival midway, community engaged/social practice, and a bit of commercial portraiture. The project embeds as a class at ArtCenter College of Design where students read articles, meet members of the community, and practice crewing a booth. On the day of the festival, they run the booth’s portrait studio and printing stations. They engage with community, and head out to gather stories. Two co-educators have been instrumental in moving this project forward and insuring the success of the class: Everard Williams and Manjeri Sharma.

What’s Your Story? is about seeing and being seen, and celebrating the stories we carry. It is dedicated to returning agency to the subject, as participants choose the image that represents them, and the story they want to share. It’s about breaking the algorithms that keep us separated and affording student face-to-face community engagement.

visit @whatsyourstoryla on Instagram