This special collaboration between forty high school students in Accra, Ghana, and in the Phoenix metropolitan area was inspired by SMoCA’s exhibition Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up. The teens in Accra worked with Lyle Ashton Harris (who teaches at New York University and in the university’s study-abroad program in Ghana) and college interns from Harris’s classes. In Arizona, the teens worked with ASU photography professor James Hajiceck and ASU interns. The high school students are making self-portraits, exchanging ideas through an on-line blog and then combining their works in a collaborative collage that reflects their sense of global community. 


The project’s Arizona chapter features twenty students (4 students from each school) from five metropolitan schools including: Central High School, South Mountain High School, Metropolitan Arts Institute, Coronado High School and Gilbert High School.