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Lauren
's mentorship /

Transmedia Holocaust remembrance

Achieving a personal goal that reaches others

Mentee Profile

Lauren was a high school sophomore with a talent for photography and interest in the power of storytelling. As the descendant of a Holocaust survivor, Lauren wanted to create a project that would preserve and share these important stories for future generations.

Mentee Goals

Learn effective interviewing techniques to document the stories of different Holocaust survivors and their families in their own words

Hone her photography skills to capture intimate moments in her subject's lives and build out her body of work

Mentorship extension goal: To compile, edit, and publish a book that combines interviews, photographs, and personal narratives

Mentor Match

Lauren's mentor was an award-winning photographer, filmmaker and educator who teaches at NYU and The New School. In addition to teaching courses on photography and photojournalism, she specializes in transmedia skills and craft, which combines various media to create nuanced stories.

Custom Curriculum

Skill Development

In addition to learning the basic skills of photography and interviewing technique necessary to complete her book, Lauren also learned how to arrange pictures on a page, create maps and make family trees. She also became well-versed in publishing software like InDesign and Blurb, an online publishing platform, while learning about transmedia practices, or how to combine different media for immersive, multidimensional storytelling.

Program

In the first phase of her mentorship, Lauren learned fundamental photojournalistic skills, which she used while interviewing and photographing Holocaust survivors and their families, and gathered historical and family photographs for context. After gathering her content, Lauren decided to extend her mentorship in order to realize a larger scale project, and worked with her mentor to create and publish a book that wove these narratives together.

Final Project

Lauren's final project was a published copy of her book, which preserves the stories of five different families of Holocaust survivors.

MENTEE FEEDBACK

Students self-reported large gains in:

Clarification of which academic areas interests her

Clarification of a career path

Technical skills

Enhancement of her ability to problem solve

Appreciation for the value of her own contributions

Accomplishing a personal goal

Vist project website

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