A photograph from Francis Crisafio’s “HOLDUP in the HOOD” project (all photos courtesy the artist)
Pittsburgh-based artist Francis Crisafio’s ongoing project HOLDUP in the HOOD extends the definition of the selfie, bringing in a directorial component similar to the one seen in Oli Rodriguez’s rendition. For more than a decade, Crisafio has been documenting an after-school arts program called FACES / a children’s arts collaborative, which works with inner-city youth from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Manchester. Here, uncovering the self and the selfie requires understanding implications of race, class, and gender at a very young age.
Manchester used to be the home of Pittsburgh’s super-rich in the 1920s and gave rise to artists such as Mary Cassatt, Gertrude Stein, and Martha Graham. Today, it’s a neighborhood in flux. ”The neighborhood never seems to get totally gentrified, which sort of sets up this contrast of extreme poverty on one hand and the gentrified set on the other,” Crisafio told Hyperallergic.
Read the full story here: http://hyperallergic.com/89589/holding-up-selfies/
