About the project:

Upstate Girls: What Became of Collar City
As a journalist and activist dedicated to exploring class inequity in America, I am concerned with the internalized social messages that I believe will live on for generations after our economic and social policies catch up with those living on the bottom of America’s society. My project explores the way that money is but a symptom of self worth and a means by which humans separate from each other, and that poverty is an emotional rather than physical state, cementing those who are marginalized into their place. The economic crisis has taken some of the moral sting from being poor but the conversation remains centered on economic, rather than social stimulus relief, and on those recently without money, rather than on Americans whose ongoing struggles are ignored by the headlines.

My project has followed seven women for five years as their escape routes from generational poverty have led to further entrapments. In compiling a generational history of the emotional spiral of those resigned to the lower class in the United States, I will use the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography to continue this work over the next year, as the need for nuanced and sustained journalism will be crucial to reflect the social fallout from the economic crisis.

I have chosen to work in Troy, New York, which labor historians have argued, is the proto-type of America’s dream of upward mobility. Troy’s bustling industrial past includes the invention of the detachable shirt collar and factories that employed thousands in manufacturing them. Troy was even designated by Congress as the official home town of Uncle Sam, our national symbol of freedom. These once-proud aspirations are in stark contrast to the city’s present social conditions. Now, 16.3% of Troy’s children live below the poverty line and in families headed by single mothers working at minimum wage jobs with no benefits. Manufacturing has moved overseas. The region is now home to major prison complexes, whose service jobs draw migrating populations from the boroughs of New York City, even as prisoners who’ve served their terms are released back into the region. As local law enforcement struggles to deal with the changing population, record numbers of young males from Troy’s low income population are being jailed. The culture of incarceration among the poor is altering the city’s domestic and social landscape.

The final out-put for The Upstate Girls project will be over four platforms: A traveling gallery installation with a print series, edited to show each woman’s story and emotional shifts, as prospects dim. Video installations will also convey the chaos, boredom, futility and desperation of marginalization. A book will be designed and printed in graphic novel layout to render it accessible to the target audience of teens, and to engage them with the history that has such social relevance in their lives today. This aspect of the project will be developed with the Hudson Valley Community College’s Non-Traditional Studies Program for first generation college students. An expanded online component of the project will be released as a series, and a feature length documentary will be produced and released via The Raw File, our web blog.