My Place in the CNMI 2010

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About My Place in the CNMI 2010

A Community Photography Project

Thirty years after becoming a self-governing entity, and more than twenty years after the UN trusteeship (TTPI) ended, the CNMI has undergone and continues to undergo cultural, social and economic changes. The current generation of high school students is the first to entirely grow up in a post TTPI political environment. What is shaping their view of the CNMI and the world as a whole? What lies in store for the CNMI when this generation assume its civic obligations as voters?

These high students are also the first generation to be called techno-natives, i.e. individuals who are growing up in a world driven by digital technology and the instant global connectivity of the internet. Unlike the older generations, these high school students know no other world.

The first decade of the twenty-first century has shown how visual imagery has come to dominate public perceptions and opinions. It is only appropriate to have these techno-native high school students use digital technology to document and showcase their view of the world around them.

Community photography projects empower individual members of a community to visually document, and thereby portray to others, what they think comprises the essence of their community. By ensuring a breadth of representation, the resulting imagery should result in a visual mosaic of all facets of a given community.

By focusing on the individual, a community project can explore the personal relationships, and how they are embedded into society as a whole, through increasing levels of (re-)presenting the public sphere.

Students from the High Schools of the CNMI will be invited to participate in the project. The aim is ensure adequate geographic representation (Rota, Tinian, various districts of Saipan), ethnic mix (Chamorro, Carolinian, other) and gender. The project will be run through the provision of two workshops, a selection of final images by a judging panel, and the curation of an exhibition.

http://myplacecnmi.org