AUTHOR'S NOTES
Thoughts I want to share with you to give you a better understanding of this project and the steps taken to provide respectful and quality work.
I wanted to make sure that thought went into every word of a sentence and every editing adjustment of a photo. In this, there was no room for error. I needed it to be as perfect as possible. Here are some of the efforts I took.
Though I am the one taking the photos for this project, I tried to put as little of my own input as possible into the photo choices. After taking each person on their own personalized photoshoot in a location that we mutually agreed upon - whether suggested by me or them - I would sit at my laptop and go through all of the photos, tagging all of my favorites for editing. After editing the photos, I sent all of the edited photos back to the person. It was important to me that they were happy with the photos, both with how they're edited and how they feel about themselves in the picture. Once I sent those photos, I asked the person to tell me which photo was their favorite out of the set. I wanted to only use a photo that I knew the person was happy with, and this was the best way to accomplish that.
An element of this project that troubled me for a little while was the use of the n-word. When asking questions about racism, I knew the word would come up at least once. As a white person, I knew I had to be extremely careful with the use of the word in a project that I created. It was used a few different times, but each time, it was notated differently. Some people used an asterisk for one letter, some people used them for all but one, and some people just said n-word. When trying to determine how to navigate the use of the word in the project, I realized that it wasn't up to me. I messaged every person who used the word in one of their answers, and asked them how they would prefer me to notate it. It is not my word, and therefore, I have no right to tell those-who-the-word-belongs-to how to use it.