For my personal vision project, I focused on youth and trying to express feelings and emotions on my subjects' faces. I mostly photographed my sister, as she is probably the one person I know who doesn’t let societal standards affect her, which I feel is an accurate representation of youth. I want to address how from a young age I never expressed my emotions nor had any type of reactions to anything. I remember once on vacation, my mom was happy that I threw a tantrum because I was tired, which goes to show how I was as a kid. I even went to a social worker for four years because of my lack of emotions. I wanted to express the different emotions I felt throughout my youth and what I still feel now, even though I don’t physically and verbally express it. I try to accomplish this by telling my subjects to express an emotion that they are feeling at that moment because I want to get somewhat of a raw emotion, or I just make photos when they don’t expect it to capture that. I like having people collaborate with my work, which is why I chose to do this. It allows me to interact with people who I make photos of and learn more about them. My personal vision project gave me the opportunity to express my emotions freely in a way that I’m comfortable with and to produce work I’m proud of. I hope to later expand on this body of work.
Hailey Moya grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, where she has lived for sixteen years. She is currently a junior at the High School of Fashion Industries, where she majors in photography. She mostly uses her film camera, a Nikon F3, and her iPad to create images. She works with the people who are closest to her, mainly her sister, because she can easily direct them and execute her vision better. In her images, she tries to create portraits using lighting to make her work more interesting, especially since all of her images are in black-and-white. She likes working in the dark to make her subjects brighter, and it is more fun to see how the image will turn out since she can’t see in the dark and points the camera in random positions. She is currently a student in the International Center of Photography’s Teen Academy Imagemakers program, where she is expanding her knowledge of photography and collaborating with her peers. In college, Hailey hopes to major in astrophysics and explore a career in that.