This media collection marks the starting point of a broader project. It’s a tribute to archives, to the act of preserving and revisiting memory. It also reflects an effort made towards allowing communities to shape their own narratives; curate what gets remembered, what stands out, and what gets passed on.
As anthropologists, we seek to understand culture: its rituals, hierarchies, subjectivities, and motivations. We attempt to make sense of what we observe and to represent it with nuance and care. This project focuses on a space where storytelling and truth-making intersect. A university yearbook, after all, is one of the most precious ways an institution is able to paint a picture of a shared experience, bringing the student body together through a single, yet collective piece of media.
The Olla Podrida is Wesleyan University’s own yearbook, which went out of print in 2008. This project marks my first attempt to reintroduce it as part of student culture. Stretching the idea of “making a picture”, I invite for dialogue between those featured and those assembling the archive while also making a commentary on subjectivity, changes in perception, and the fickle concept of reality.
These pages were created using real student experiences. They were recollected, assembled, organized, and interpreted by me.
