What We Hear
William Steinfeld | Rhode Island, United States
Photographer: William Steinfeld
Exhibit Title: What We Hear
Location: Rhode Island, United States
In the spaces in which we grow up we are faced with the task of for the first time, taking on the responsibility of building communities on our own. So often they appear as small, self-contained worlds from the outside. From the inside, however, they contain the camaraderie, the heartbreak, the striving, the stakes, of the "real world" beyond.
This project seeks to portray the wonderful Brown University Marching Band in all the heroicism and glory that one would see from the inside of their world.
College is a transient time. Many of us are lucky enough to enter still as kids, and also lucky to leave as (more or less) adults. What's more, the intervening time is in a space largely insulated from the world outside. In this space, everyone faces a project of building a world for themselves, and doing so with the knowledge that they'll soon leave it behind. Even with this knowledge, many pour time and effort into the communities we find in that time between arriving and leaving. People used to ask me why I spent basically half the hours in my year playing for the school’s ultimate frisbee team, and there was no rational answer. It’s what I did, and I liked it. Only when something like this is over can you see it as a finished product: as something we do to be in a world together. It’s an excuse, really. You build something, but it’s because you like hanging out at the construction site.
I hope that even if you don’t recognize the specific people or traditions, you recognize the work being done.
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