Artist Statement

Lina Sullivan

Portraits of Strength In Our Community is a participatory photography project that shares photos and thoughts of people in the Central Square community of Cambridge, MA. Through this project, we asked people in Central Square for their participation in our project to include a variety of answers to our questions. We asked our participants to answer three questions and took a photo. The questions were: What do you love about yourself? What defines you? What is a challenge or obstacle you have faced and how did you overcome it? These questions were made to be challenging, in order for us to get the most depth and understanding about the people in the Central Square community. We did not include the names of our participants because we thought their thoughts, stories, and opinions were stronger than a name. We picked the best answer to go underneath the picture in order to create a variety of answers. Through this project we hope to share our strengths and stories with the community.