2016 Discussion:
I was amazed at how easily Amara was able to talk about dealing with mental health on this campus. She is also a photographer and we spoke about a photographic series she collaborated on with a couple of other people that centered the topic of mental health. She was open about her anxiety attacks and how being at Dartmouth has only heightened them. When I asked her what had been her support networks during her time here she listed off woman of color after woman of color. She had built a support network of women who had experienced a similar narrative or could empathize and offer support. This would be a constant theme throughout my conversations with many of the women in this project.
Visual Analysis:
We walked into Collis Commonground and the place was littered with students studying. We reclaimed the space immediately as I grabbed a sofa from one of the corners and placed it under the light filtering in through the window. I asked Amara if she felt comfortable taking the photograph in the middle of this room with people around her and she looked at me, jumped onto the sofa and looked straight at the camera. Again, the angle of the camera is below her sight line and gives her portrait a feeling of comfort and agency. She lounges back on the sofa and places her leg on top of the sofa arm. Her entire body takes up the area of sunlight in the photograph. She is taking up space within the photograph and in the physical space.
2 Year Follow Up:
“Nine months out of college and I’ve given birth to an amorphous tangle of emotions, conceived from endless trying (and failing) to process what the last four years of my life had been. I can’t fully commit to hating Dartmouth with my whole heart, only because of the love and support from certain people, places, and spaces I was so blessed to have found there.
I still have dreams (nightmares?) where I find myself back on campus. Maybe I’m longing for the certainty I had while there, the knowledge that my time had a definite conclusion. Because now I’ve been thrust into the “real world,” and I have no idea what the future holds. At least once a week I have an episode of my recurring existential crisis that’s even more violently jarring than when I was a student; I panic about having to be stuck in the tedium of daily life until the day I die. And that day will surely come, but it feels so far away that it may as well be an eternity and I don’t know how to cope with that.
I thought I would get better after leaving Dartmouth, and in some ways that’s true. I have a great job, I keep in touch with my friends, and I even have a fake lover who isn’t my lover (but could possibly be my lover). But scars take time to fade—I can only hope these ones will, too.”
-Amara