The National Press Club's Photography Team plans to hear from team member Nancy Shia about her acclaimed Out My Window photo collection, Thursday, July 15, at 11:30 a.m. in the Cosgrove Lounge.
This will be the Photography Team's first in-person event since the pandemic was declared, with safety protocols in place for participants. The event is open to all Club members. Admission is free, but registration in advance is requested.
Nancy Shia is a D.C. community photographer and activist, and a longtime member of the Club and its Photography Committee/Team. The Out My Window collection chronicles her 40 years of living in D.C. at Ontario Road and Columbia Road NW, and the changes taking place in the Adams Morgan and surrounding neighborhoods over that time. The images document homelessness and gentrification in these communities, as well as the Mount Pleasant uprising in May 1991, and the early D.C. Latino Festivals that began as neighborhood celebrations.
Out My Window is a project of the educational advocacy group Teaching for Change, to provide a resource for students, teachers, and community members. Nancy Raquel Mirabal, University of Maryland historian and director of the project, says Shia's photos "are a reminder of neighborhood histories and experiences that are continually being shaped and guided by generations of families, communities and networks that all lived, worked, resisted, and played here before and during the revitalization programs, gentrification, and economic displacement."
Shia studied photography and sociology at the City College of New York, and later social work at Columbia University. In 1972, she moved to D.C. to attend Antioch Law School, and by 1979, moved to a first-floor apartment in Adams Morgan. She began photographing her neighborhoods while in high school, and continued through her university days in New York City to today. During her work with Federal News Service up to 2005, Shia served as a D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, 1982-84. Shia also scanned and archived more than 40 boxes of hard-copy photos for the D.C. Public Library.
At the meeting, Shia will take participants through the Out My Window collection, and describe how her photography combines with community activism. A Q&A session will follow.
After the meeting participants are invited to stay for lunch from the Reliable Source (pay on your own). Participants are expected to have their COVID-19 vaccination card images on their phones or a recent negative OVID-19 test to be able to enter the Club. See the Club's safety guidelines for details.
