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Students’ photo exhibit documents Navajo life

A LOOK AT SUMMER: Photography students form the Herberger School of Art and Design opened a gallery Tuesday night displaying images from their summer spent living on the Navajo Reservation. (Photo by Annie Wechter)
A LOOK AT SUMMER: Photography students form the Herberger School of Art and Design opened a gallery Tuesday night displaying images from their summer spent living on the Navajo Reservation. (Photo by Annie Wechter)

A student-based photography exhibit featuring life in the Navajo Nation opened Tuesday evening at an ASU gallery.

The exhibit, “Díne Bikéyah: Familiar Views, Foreign Eyes,” chronicles daily life experiences in the Navajo Nation, located in Chinle, Ariz., said photography senior Tiffiney Yazzie.

Yazzie and five friends are the photographers who created the exhibition, which is open from Sept. 14 to 24 at ASU’s Step Gallery, near University Drive and Mill Avenue.

One of the exhibit’s photographers, photography senior Teresa Valencia, said the majority of the photos were taken during a week the group spent at the Navajo Nation.

Once they returned, the thousands of photographs taken were narrowed down to a selection of 120.

Photography senior Adrian Lesoing, also a member of the photography group, said visitors to the exhibition will be pleasantly surprised by what they discover.

“It’s not just about landscapes,” she said. “That’s what a lot of people think coming to the show and that’s not what it is at all.”

Lesoing and Valencia said the photos are actually a visual storybook about their experience on the Navajo Nation and the lifestyle of the Navajos.

The group hopes people will attend the exhibit and learn about a different way of life.

“Why we did this show is so people could come and learn about something they otherwise couldn’t,” Valencia said.

Another of the group’s photographers, photography senior Megan Chain, said the show opens up new doors about the differences in lifestyles of Navajos and other groups of people, adding that it’s a matter of spirituality and harmony.

“At the center of their value system, it’s just to remain in harmony with one another and life,” she said. “Here, we are raised to be individualists [and] capitalists, and they are raised to be part of a community.”

One ASU student was drawn in by the seemingly foreign lifestyle the photos illuminate.

“I’m really struck by how personal [the photos] are,” dance senior Alyssa Gersony said.

“It’s close to home,” she said. “These students travelled to this Navajo community and they’re making a lot of connections to being an ASU student and living … on an Indian reservation.”

Gersony said she attended the exhibit opening out of curiosity and is glad she did.

“I’m appreciating these little short stories that are sort of going along with each individual’s experience,” she said.

Yazzie and her friends said they believe the exhibit will show ASU students there is another lifestyle than that of an average student.

“We had access to a way of life that isn’t accessible to people down here, or most people who aren’t Native,” Yazzie said.

Chain said she hopes the photos will allow others to reflect upon their own lives.

“We wanted to bring something back that people could see and have a connection with,” she said. “[We want people to] realize there is another whole way of life and there is this respect for the land, life and people that we don’t particularly partake in.”

The exhibition will be shown Monday to Thursday from noon to 5 p.m. and Friday from noon to 3 p.m.

Reach the reporter at tdmcknig@asu.edu


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