During the Spring 2016, Digital Diaspora Family Reunion worked with Dartmouth students on a student-led DDFR Roadshow. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Dartmouth Senior Vero Davis gathered together a crew, set up in Dartmouth’s Baker Library and began spontaneously recruiting and interviewing students & faculty around the family photos on their cell phones. Below is the first day of the Digital Diaspora Roadshow. In images and stories of this community, a one world one family album emerges that finds communality across ethnic, gender and age differences. All participants left the interviews feeling the sense for celebration of our collective humanity.
“My name is Mahnoor Maqsood, and I’m an ’18 from Pakistan. This past spring break I went to Puerto Rico with some of my best friends, and this photo shows two of us in the water at the beach. I like it because both of us in the water are swimmers, but we were struggling in the current, and our friend happened to take the picture just as we were falling down.” – Mahnoor Maqsood
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“My name is Jessica and this is a photo of my two younger brothers. I really love this photo because I don’t have very many photos of my second-youngest brother (he’s 11 and hates taking pictures). Their mom took this photo of them at Disneyland, where they were having fun without me, but it’s nice to see them having a good time even though I’m not there.” – Jessica Cantos
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“My name is Bethany Malzman and I’m a ’19. I was born and raised in South Florida in Del Rey Beach. This is a photo of the beach near my house, which I chose because it reminds me of my family when I’m here at Dartmouth. Coming to Dartmouth was a big change in environment, which was a little challenging, so I look at this photo as a reminder of where I came from and as a symbol of my background.” – Bethany Malzman
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“My name is Dennise Hernandéz and I’m a ’17 from New York City, but I was born in Puebla, Mexico. Around two years ago, after not visiting for 18 years, I was able to go back to Mexico and visit my family. This picture s from that trip, and shows the first time my siblings and I met the cousins, uncles, and aunts we had been told about. A funny thing about this is that we didn’t look at the photos until we came back to the US, and when I saw this I was surprised that we looked so alike. This past December, we went to visit again with some of my cousins from the US. In this second picture, all the cousins—both US and Mexico born—are getting to know each other for the first time over ice cream.” – Dennise Hernandéz
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“My name in Kristen Perez and I’m a ’19. This is a photo of me and my sisters at Christmas time, many years ago. I think I was 2 or 3 in this picture, so I was really young. This picture is really important to me because I grew up really close to my sister. Now that I’m away from home, I still talk to them all the time and they’re still a big part of my life. My mom took this photo and my sister was going through our family albums for siblings day, and this was one of her favorites because we’re all in it and we all look cute.” – Kristen Perez
“My name is Guill Gomez and I’m a ’19. This past summer I went to Europe with my family. This is a picture a mother took of me and my sister in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This was a really cool trip, and this photo reminds me of it and my sister. I don’t see her as much since I’ve stated college, and this reminds me of her.” – Guillermo Guill Gomez
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“My name is Gerd Gemunden and I’m a Professor in the Film and German departments. I have a black-and-white picture of my mom in what I was led to believe was a youth swimming race in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. A few years ago when my mom turned 90, she told me that while everyone thinks this was taken at the Olympics, this photo was actually taken at some local pool where people could swim. She went to the Berlin Olympics, but she was in the stands. Sharing this photo with you is a little odd, since Germans are really private, but I have trust in this crew, and I know you do good things.” – Gerd Gemunden
“My name is Mikala Williams and I’m an ’18. I actually have a picture that I just picked up from my mailbox, sent to me from my great aunt. It’s a picture of my maternal family at my grandmother’s 100th birthday party. It’s a really big deal to have a grandmother who is 100, and she recently voted in the Democratic primary, which is pretty crazy. I wasn’t able to go to this party because I was here at school.
It’s exciting to have real photographs, since I feel like we don’t really work in paper mediums much anymore. There’s something really intimate about receiving a paper photo in the mail from an older family member.” – Mikala Williams
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“My name is Tsion Abera and I’m a ’17. I’m originally from Ethiopia, but now I live in Washington, D.C. This photo is from my birthday party the day before I left Ethiopia. This is the last picture and last memory I have before leaving Ethiopia, and my entire family was there. It’s important to me because it was the last time my entire extended family was all together in their home country. We have all been immigrants since this photo, so it’s a very powerful moment.” – Tsion Abera
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“My name is Jarley Lopez and I’m a ’19. This is a photo of my family on New Years. It has my mom, cousins, aunts and siblings, and we took it right at the new year. Just before this photo we had facetimed our extended family in Mexico. To me, family to me includes all the people in this photo and those who aren’t. This is really special because this has a lot of my close family members in one picture.” – Jarley Lopez
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“My name is Teresa Alvarado and I’m a ’19. This is a photo from my high school graduation. It’s of me and siblings and parents. My family doesn’t typically take photos because we’re really shy and busy. (This was also supposed to be a funny picture but no one got the hang of it but me.) Two of my older sibling are married and have their own lives, so to have everyone together and have them take a picture is really special. I never had my quinceñera, so this party sort of served a dual purpose of that party and graduation.” – Teresa Alvarado-Patlan
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“My name is Marcus Reid and I’m an ’18. This is a family portrait, but it excludes my parents and I think that’s representative of them anyway, because they always put their kids first. In the center is my youngest brother has a rare form of epilepsy, which has slowed his mental and physical development, but not his spirit. It’s good that he’s the central part of the photo because he’s been the central part of our lives since we adopted him. Next to him is our dog Samba, who helps my brother and basically acts as the rock of our family. My second photo shows me and my brothers because a little bit younger. This was soon after we adopted my youngest brother (two of my brothers are adopted). This was taken before we knew about his condition, and he’s not supposed to be upside down in this, but he thought the picture would look best this way. It’s fitting because he turned our world upside down when he came into our lives, but he’s made it so enjoyable too. We definitely butt heads from time to time as all siblings do, but we love each other and I couldn’t imagine going through life as an only child.” – Marcus Reid
To see more photos from the roadshow, visit our Flickr album.
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