Humans of Fort St. James photo project aims to combat racism in community
Project is inspired by photo blog, Humans of New York, followed by millions
A group in central British Columbia is turning to street-style photography as a way to combat racism and stereotyping in the small community.
Ruth Lloyd, coordinator of the Humans of Fort St. James project, says the idea came from the similarly-named photo blog Humans of New York, which has millions of followers worldwide.
The portrait images are accompanied by poignant snippets of the life stories of people in the pictures.
"Even though we're a very small place, we have a very diverse population with different cultural backgrounds from all over," Lloyd told Sarah Penton, host of CBC's Radio West.
"[We] came up with the idea of doing portraits of people in our community to help celebrate the beauty in the diversity."
The photos don't include names because, as the captions urge, "Even when we don't know a person's name, we should remember they are people who have a story, just like us."
Some of the people who have shared their stories so far include a woman who moved to Fort St. James in the fall of 1977 to look for a job at a sawmill — one of the few hiring women back then — and her perseverance paid off.
Another woman featured was born in a logging camp near Burns Lake with the help of her grandmother stepping in as midwife to deliver her. She, too, went on to help deliver babies in Fort St James.
"She had a very unique upbringing, coming from that — I mean, it was kind of a hard life," Lloyd said.
"It's a really nice thing to hear a little piece of people's story and get a little insight into their own individual experiences."
Fort St. James is a small community, with about 4,500 people between the municipality, nearby rural areas and First Nations, and so most people know each other — but not all the details.
Lloyd says the project helps bring people together.
"Some of them are people that you've known but you didn't know this particular aspect of their lives or [it's a way of] getting to know someone that you've seen around the community," she said.
And that, she added, helps get at stigmas and stereotypes.
"It helps you really connect to them as an individual and not to just see them as perhaps this exterior," she said.
"It's actually really beautiful because it's created a really positive dialogue."