So often photo albums and other repositories of memory are tucked away in basements and drawers and remain untouched, and yet the web of family can be a rich source of inspiration and analysis for artists, documentarians, and everyday people.

Educator Kamal Badhey and her adult and teen students, William Page, A’ssia Rai, and Valerie Zink reflect on their journey of investigating their family archives. Kamal will share the process by which her autobiographical work, Portals, and Passageways, an excavation of the life of her great-great-grandfather Annam Rathnaiah, became the curricular backbone for her adult education course Family: Reinterpreting the Personal Archive at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, and for the Teen Academy course, Reconstructing the Family Album at the International Center of Photography.

Former students will join the conversation, sharing their personal motivations and reflections on their family archives. Each will share process-oriented, slow forms of family work that incorporates writing, archival photographs, personal objects, or stories. Student creative engagement expands our notion of family by paying tribute to ancestors, disrupting linear narratives, and re-imagining new spaces.

Free Virtual Panel!

Sing up at Photoville