Go, Sheila!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Wear this flag and talk to me

Focus On Arts: Photographer stops at Winston-Salem State during tour to give voice to the attitudes of America's Generation Y

By Tom Patterson

Sheila Pree adjusts the flag wrapped around Michael Wright of Gastonia, a freshman at Winston-Salem State. Her photos, taken at Diggs Gallery, will be part of an exhibit to premiere at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta next year. (Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll)

Sheila Pree, a photographer from Atlanta, is looking for members of "Generation Y" - young people from 18 to 25 - who are willing to be photographed with the U.S. flag in poses that reflect something about their identities and their feelings about the country.

Last week she brought her search to Winston-Salem State University. On Monday and Tuesday the university's Diggs Gallery was temporarily closed to the public so she could use it as a makeshift studio. She made color photographs of 15 students posed with a large U.S. flag against a white backdrop.

Images that she selects from these studio sessions and others she is holding in cities across the country will become part of a series titled "Young Americans," set to premiere in May as a solo exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum of Art. The photographs are also scheduled to travel to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., and to be reproduced in a book devoted to the series, Pree said.

"Young Americans" is the first series in which Pree has focused on generational identity. Her parents are black Americans from Waycross, Ga., she said, but she was born and raised in Germany as an "Army brat" and never lived in a predominantly black neighborhood.

Pree said she began working on her "Young Americans" series in July, after she came up with the idea of using the U.S. flag as a prop. "Young people born between 1983 and 2000 make up the biggest generation since the baby boomers, but they're often negatively portrayed in our society," she said. "I wanted to give them a platform to speak for themselves, to show and tell how they feel about this country."

Rather than directing her subjects, Pree said, she collaborates with them by allowing them to choose what to wear, how to pose and how to interact with the flag in the photographs.

"One of them said to me, 'Nobody has ever allowed us this type of freedom before,'" she said.

While the sessions are in progress Pree encourages her subjects to talk about their ideas and feelings about America. She makes audio recordings of these exchanges and plans to include some of the recordings in the exhibition, so that viewers can listen to them on iPods while looking at the photos.

Josh Phifer, an 18-year-old Winston-Salem State freshman from Charlotte, posed for Pree on Monday afternoon. In talking about the session afterward, he said, "I took her idea a step further and tried to show how I feel as a black person about America. For one of my poses I had the flag enveloping my body, and I held my fist up. For another one I held out the flag and looked down at it, to represent the struggle of black people in the past and how much I've gained by that struggle."

About the generational theme of Pree's project, Phifer said, "There's so much negativity about this generation. I just want to be able to make a change in the way people perceive us."

Soon after she began the project, Pree said, a group of art patrons from Hartford, Conn., came to her studio during a visit to Atlanta. One member of the group was on the board of directors for the Aetna Foundation in Hartford, and was so enthusiastic about Pree's project that she arranged for the foundation to award Pree a $45,000 grant to complete it, Pree said. She said that she spent most of the money on the Hasselblad camera and special lenses she is using to make the photographs.

Belinda Tate, the Diggs Gallery's director and curator, also visited Pree's studio last summer, while in Atlanta for the city's annual Black Arts Festival. Tate had arranged to talk with Pree about acquiring additional photographs from her "Plastic Bodies" series for Winston-Salem State's art collection.

"She told me about the new project she was working on, and I immediately fell in love with the idea," Tate said. "She wasn't originally planning to come to Winston-Salem, but I wanted to create a voice for our students within her project, and I was able to convince her to come here. Participating in this project is a wonderful opportunity for Winston-Salem State to demonstrate the diversity of the student body and to give a voice to our students who might not otherwise be heard."

Pree said she began making photographs for the project in Atlanta, and before coming to Winston-Salem she made additional photos at several northeastern colleges and universities, including Yale, Trinity College and the University of Connecticut. "But this project is not just about schools," she said. "I want to include young people from diverse backgrounds and from all socio-economic groups."

After leaving Winston-Salem, Pree was scheduled to make photos for the project in New York. She said she also plans to photograph young people in New Orleans, Little Rock and Memphis, and hopes to schedule sessions in California.

She said that her sessions to date have yielded 45 to 50 of the 100 photographs she wants to include in the series, and that she aims to complete the project early next year.

Pree, 37, holds a master of fine arts degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she has lived since 1996. Her previous work highlighted issues related to ethnic identity and gender. Her "Suburbia" series focused on suburban-dwelling black Americans.

In her "Plastic Bodies" series, Pree merged images of dolls and black American women to critically examine body-enhancement practices driven by the physically idealized portrayal of women in the mass media. A gallery representing Pree's work has donated a photo from the latter series to Winston-Salem State's art collection.