Whittier photographer / historian wins Lange–Taylor Prize

Jen Kinney, a photographer, writer, and historian currently living in Whittier, has won the 2013 Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The award is given to encourage collaboration in documentary work in the tradition of acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange and writer and social scientist Paul Taylor.

Kinney’s entry, “City Under One Roof,” is about Whittier’s shared spaces, especially the Begich Towers where most of the town’s residents live. In this “unlikely crossroads of community and solitude, isolation and claustrophobia,” Kinney investigates “how the structures that people inhabit shape and order their lives; how, in turn, people construct, alter, and destroy spaces; and how these constant renovations to our physical world mirror changes in the stories that we tell ourselves, and how we structure our lives to these stories.”

Kinney graduated in 2012 from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in photography and imaging. She is currently working on a book about Whittier that includes her photographs, edited oral histories, historical essays, and archival photographs.

To view Jen’s images, please visit:

http://jakinney.com/

http://cdsporch.photoshelter.com/gallery/Lange-Taylor-Prize-2013-Jen-Kinney-Images/G0000LvZxBCs869w/C00009taULymel.4(password: WhittierAK)