2014 Spotlight Grand Prize Finalist: Angela Francis
Several months ago, I had the great pleasure to sit on a committee of jurors for the annual Southern California Spotlight Awards for high schoolers in the arts. We had several weeks to explore images submitted by a wide range of talented photographers and ultimately selected two Grand Prize Finalists: Angela Francis and Sophia Arriola-Gibson (her post will run tomorrow). We were all extremely impressed by the level of artistic seeing in the students, but most impressive were the individual sessions we had with each photographer, getting to know their intentions and future goals. Needless to say, there will be a number of strong photographic voices entering college this year.
Angela shares work from her Rekindled project where the act of photographing family, being a participant observer in the theater of her own life, allowed for insights on both sides of the camera. The jurors were impressed by her sophisticated seeing and insightful imagery.
Angela Francis, 18, recently graduated from Bishop Montgomery High School Summa Cum Laude, with a suitcase filled with awards and achievements. In addition to her Spotlight Grand Prize win, Angela won a Gold Award from the National Young Arts Foundation and was named a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts and her work will be shown in the Smithsonian!. She also received a Scholastic Gold Portfolio Key, along with several other awards. She was on the National Honor Society, including the Principal’s Honor Roll, Editor-in-Chief of the yearbook, on the staff of the newspaper, and Scholar Athlete, MVP and captain of the varsity Track team.
She has been photographing for five years and was originally self-taught on a 35mm camera. Since her freshman year of high school, Angela has been an Advanced Studies Photography student at Venice Arts. Through Venice Arts, Angela compiled a photo essay discussing her family and the changes she experienced during 2013. The finished product was a book, which was hand bound, and has been shown in several gallery shows around the US and in Hong Kong. Her primary focus is black and white portraiture and documentary work. Her most prominent influences are Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, and her grandmother, Alice Paul. Angela will attend Boston University in the fall, with a major in photojournalism. This is Angela’s first year participating in the Spotlight Awards.
Rekindled
I see myself as a storyteller. These images provide a glimpse into my life and my relationships. My book, Rekindled, discusses changes and family dynamics, but it also touches on things that I presume many people can relate to. These images are from the Twin Cities project I did through Venice Arts. For my junior year of high school, I was partnered with a student in Hong Kong, and Rekindled is a product of our conversation. I talked about myself, my parents, grandmother, cousins, and friends. However, most importantly, I discussed a cycle. Rekindled is about a journey, it is about reshaping and rebuilding. The images give others an opportunity to see things from my perspective. For my family, it gave them a chance to see themselves through my eyes. For myself, it was a healing process. This project is not complete, and I am still exploring the concept.
Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.
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![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](http://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
