"How I See It:" My Place Exhibit

Behind the Scenes

The How I See It — My Place Project provided a wonderful opportunity for me as a new librarian to grow professionally and reach out to Auburn teens as the Auburn Library continues to work to expand our services to this large part of our patron population. Though I was not part of the application process, once the grant was awarded us, I was certainly ready to embark on this journey with our youth participants to discover how they see the community we all share.

Auburn is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about 30 miles east of Sacramento. Founded during the Gold Rush in the 1840’s, Auburn, population 13,000, maintains a small-town atmosphere, and is known for its history, recreational activities, art community, and growing wine industry. The Auburn Library is the largest and busiest branch of the twelve Placer County Libraries, and is located adjacent to E.V. Cain Middle School, much of whose student population frequents the library after school, whether to use the computers, study, hang out with friends, or just wait for a ride from Mom or Dad. Two of the three participants in our project fit into the category of students who regularly frequent the library after school – though one now attends the high school across town – and both were eager to take a closer look at the area they passed through virtually every day.

Of the five or so photo excursions we took, our most anticipated and enjoyed was our trip to Auburn’s nearby cemetery. The landscape and setting provided most everything our teen photographers desired – a combination of happy remembrances with the macabre, new and old, man-made vs. nature, and just the right amount of solitude for them to get the creative juices flowing. In fact, the teens found that since many of the photos they took at the cemetery called upon all of the themes we focused on during the project – palimpsest, mystery, transformation, and serendipity – their discoveries there became one of the focal points for the main exhibit.

Auburn Library: at the cemetery on our second photo excursion

Though Auburn is a small town with a lot of history, the buildings/setting surrounding the Library did not seem to inspire fascination with the man-made objects we saw and how they came to be; this outlook differed from my experience during the orientation and the examples I showed them of the photos the first group of youth took in LA. Instead, my group’s photos tended to focus on nature and plants – objects that didn’t obviously lend themselves to the themes we studied each week. After a few weeks, however, I realized that it was time to step back and remember that I wasn’t the artist – that this project wasn’t about how I saw the landscape and how the photos I would have taken needed to tie into my training; no, this project was theirs, and I realized that the photos our participants took were indeed representations of how they saw our community, in spite of my original misgivings.

Auburn Library: our first photo excursion

Though I think all of us were a bit disappointed that we didn’t have more participants, the teens that participated did learn some important skills – how to interact and work outside of a classroom setting, as well as how to form their ideas into a concrete whole and then be able to present them in a cohesive way to the general public. Our staff and the library community who tend to group teens into a generally unruly bunch got to see that teens have bright, creative minds – that youth can put their skills and sense of fun into a beautiful, worthwhile whole.

— Sophie Bruno, Project Director