Donate NowOn Wednesday, May 24, 2017, please join us for a Talks @ Pulitzer, as photojournalist Daniella Zalcman discusses her photography project, "Signs of Your Identity: Forced Assimilation Education for Indigenous Youth." Her photography looks at the cultural and often traumatic impacts of residential schools on indigenous communities in Canada.
Residential schools in Canada–along with similar schools in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand–removed indigenous children from their homes and forced them to abandon their cultural heritage. While attending the schools, students were forbidden from speaking their native language or participating in cultural traditions. Additionally, many students were physically and sexually assaulted. The Canadain government formally apologized for the schools in 2008, but the cultural wounds still haunt many former students.
Using double exposure techniques, where multiple photographs are combined into a single image, Zalcman's photography explores how residential schools distorted attendees' perceptions of themselves and their culture. During the talk, she will speak about the legacy of the schools in Canada and how her project relates to similar schools in the U.S. and elsewhere. She also will discuss the evolution of her project and the use of double exposure to convey identity in her portraits.
Zalcman's photography has been displayed in exhibitions across the U.S. and Europe and has been published in many outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TIME, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair. For her work on "Signs of Your Identity" Zalcman received the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture and the 2016 Foto Evidence Book Award.
Light reception at 5:30pm with the talk beginning at 6:00pm. The event is free and open to the public.