UC Berkeley Student (Mixed!) Photographer Doing Project on Mixed Race/Culture/Identity

[Armand Emamdjomeh]

Hi Yall,

I'm a photojournalism student of Iranian-Guatemalan heritage at the
Graduate School of Journalism here on campus, and I'm working on a
class project of great personal interest to me that will be
incorporated into a photo book on immigration in the United States.
The project is based around people of mixed race/heritage/identity in
the United States, and I'm looking for people who would be willing to
be photographed and interviewed for the project. It's obviously a very
personal topic to me and I'm really looking forward to exploring it
through photography with some like-minded folks.

I realized that I could've attended the meeting that looks like it
just happened last week, and it would've been great to meet everyone,
but I only just discovered the group a few days ago.

While I've just started the project and don't have any example shots
that I can show, you can see some examples of my work here
(www.emamdphoto.com/blog) and here (www.flickr.com/photos/emamd).

A more detailed description of the project is below:

About me:
I'm a half-Guatemalan half-Iranian student in the Graduate School of
Journalism at UC Berkeley, concentrating in photojournalism. Besides
photography, I've done a ton of reporting and am currently an editor
with a website started by the J-School covering the Mission District,
www.missionlocal.org.

The idea behind the project:
While I feel that individuals born from very different cultural
backgrounds were somewhat rare among people of my age and older,
younger generations are increasingly more mixed, and this is an upward
trend in society. Meanwhile, I don't think people really know how to
deal with it, how not to categorize a person into one stereotype or
another.

This looks at America's background as a country of immigrants, and how
that, as well as globalization, is perhaps beginning to break down
notions of race, ethnicity and identity. The project involves a
portraiture approach, an eye to telling detail. Beyond a typical
portrait, what are the details in people's settings that show the
mixture/conflict of their culture and identity? How do people see
themselves? How do they want themselves to be seen?

Last, does the United States have some sort of special space or role
in all of this?

Please let me know if you're interested by phone (225.802.5886) or
email, at emamd.j...@gmail.com.

Best regards,
Armand Emamdjomeh

--
Student/Multimedia Journalist
Graduate School of Journalism
University of California at Berkeley
(c) 225.802.5886
emamd.j...@gmail.com
www.missionlocal.org