Opening Night of Raising Them Right

Amanda’s sis­ter and brother-in-law scru­ti­nize her work.

One of our good friends, Amanda Van Scoyoc, spent most of 2008 in Boston, MA where she fol­lowed the lives of teen moth­ers in a lower-income sec­tion of the city.  We vis­ited her while in Boston, and the expe­ri­ence stuck with me.  An artist of sev­eral media, Amanda has a unique tal­ent with cam­era in hand.  Her project was to doc­u­ment the expe­ri­ence of teen moth­er­hood through inter­views and pho­tog­ra­phy.  The result was a body of work and an expe­ri­ence that no doubt has affected her life, and has shed some light on the preva­lence and prob­lems with teen moth­er­hood, an issue that is very rel­e­vant in North Carolina.

Tonight was the open­ing of her exhibit, Rais­ing Them Right, where she pre­sented all of the por­traits taken of the moth­ers, their chil­dren, and some­times their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers.  It was great not only to sup­port our friend (and Isaac’s god­mother), but to see the work, printed large, hang­ing on the wall.  It was very sat­is­fy­ing to watch Amanda field ques­tions from groupies after the panel dis­cus­sion.  It was really neat to see some­one doing some­thing with her pho­tog­ra­phy, to be doing some­thing impor­tant with her tal­ent, to be mak­ing her mark on the lives of others–not only is she Isaac’s god­mother, she is also the god­mother to one of the women she inter­viewed, pho­tographed, and got to know over the course of her work with Roca.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Amanda, on the com­ple­tion of your project–I real­ize it was actu­ally done some time ago, but now you’ve received some pub­lic recog­ni­tion from your work, and enjoyed being an “author­ity” on the subject!