By Reynaldo Torres
Correspondent
Dear World, a company dedicated to creating portraits to share meaningful stories of individuals, visited the Brower Student Center on Sept. 4 to express the identities of students at the College.
The company allows for people to voice their stories with writing phrases and images on their body, photographing them and exhibiting their distinct experiences in a gallery. Its goal is to show how diversity is represented not only at the College, but every campus it visits as well.
Dear World set up its cameras, lights and markers, and waited for anyone who wanted to share their story.
Raj Toor, a junior biopsychology major who helped work the event, felt that the exhibit provided a way for students to share experiences believes it’s “a storytelling event that aims to highlight the diversity across college campuses by inviting students to share their most significant stories.”
Toor had joined the program because she enjoys the idea of seeing how diverse the College is.
“Helping people all day come up with the tagline for their stories was a remarkable experience that I am fortunate to have experienced,” she said. “We also want to reach out to freshmen coming into their first semester to get them involved,” Toor said.
The photoshoot aspect allowed everyone to be captured in a moment and pose that describes them with words written on them in marker.
Some people choose to take on powerful poses and expressions with equally powerful words written on them, while others used common stereotypes or misconceptions about them to bring light to an issue they feel passionate about.
Julia Connelly, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, wrote on her arms, “how rare and beautiful it is to even exist.”
“I chose this because at times in my life … it was difficult to feel like I was really needed or serving any worthwhile purpose,” Connelly said. “The odds of any individual existing are so monumentally small that even being born at all is extremely rare and beautiful and important.”
