Student Wins Photography Fellowship

Vanessa Carr, class of 2011, explains her fellowship project for the coming year:

Buffalo, N.Y., is shrinking. Like other Rust Belt cities, it lost its
manufacturing base and”Ówith it”Ómore than half of its population since
1950. But throughout the region, one community is growing: refugees.
From Iraqis in Detroit to Bosnians in Utica, Afghans in Schenectady to Burmese in Buffalo, a new
wave of immigration is reconstituting the working class”Óand the
cultural landscape”Óof these former industrial powerhouses.

Buffalo is home to 4,000 Burmese refugees, the city’s fastest growing
immigrant group. They are filling vacancies on the West Side, one of
the city’s most blighted neighborhoods, where many homes bear a
spray-painted “X,” the mark for demolition. I plan to create a
multimedia photography project documenting the Burmese community in
Buffalo. How are they surviving in a city that has not yet recovered
from the collapse of heavy industry thirty years ago? Is it possible
to be upwardly mobile in such a place? What political and cultural.
traditions do they bring, and how will these shape Buffalo’s future?

See more about the Lange fellowship and past winners here.