HIGHLOW Project: Artist Talk with Ned Castle

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  • Nov 08, 2018

On Thursday, November 8th at 6PM, join LPL, New Beginnings, and L/A Arts as we host a talk by photographer Ned Castle of the HIGHLOW Project. This free public program will take place in the Library’s Callahan Hall and is presented as part of National Runaway & Homeless Youth Prevention Month in November.

The HIGHLOW Project originated as a collaboration between the artist and youth served by the Vermont Coalition of Runaway Homeless Youth programs (VCRHYP).  Castle worked directly with the youth to create large-format photographs depicting re-enactments of high and low moments in each youth’s life. Audio of the youth telling their stories accompany the photographs and explain each situation’s significance. The responsibility of creative decision-making was given to the youth—from selection of highs and lows to selection of final photographs and audio. The photographs were not captured real-time; rather, they are re-enactments of how the participants remember the situations happening in the past. Great lengths were taken to re-create these memories true to form/place—in many cases meaning that photographer and youth returned to the location of the event to make the photograph. While the exhibition still bears the imprint of the photographer, its resonance comes from the youths’ willingness to share such personal moments. 

About Ned Castle

Ned Castle is an ethnographically trained documentarian who has worked in the field of public folklore for over a decade at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, Vermont. Ned’s photographic work focuses on documentary and ethnographic subject matter including, In Their Own Words, a collection of stories from New Americans resettled in Vermont, Indigenous Expressions, comprising portraits of Native Peoples from the Lake Champlain Basin, and the HIGHLOW Project, photographs and audio portraits from at-risk youth living across Vermont.

Ned is also a film-maker and has produced numerous short films including Life is the School, a collaborative documentary produced in partnership with the students, teachers, and staff of the North Branch School in Ripton, Vermont – and most recently a feature length documentary, Rooted: Cultivating Community in the Vermont Grange.

Ned attended photography school in Florence, Italy and New York City, and is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in Biology and Psychology. He studied digital photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Ned continues to work closely with the Vermont Folklife Center as a researcher, media producer, and director of the Center’s Vision & Voice Gallery – and he runs an independent ethnographic research and video production company, Frames to Life.

On the night of October 26th, an opening reception for the HIGHLOW exhibit will be held in the L/A Arts gallery from 5 to 8 pm as part of the storytelling-themed final 2018 Artwalk LA.  The show will run through the month of November and will be viewable during gallery hours (12 noon to 4 pm Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and 11-3 on weekends). The full project can be previewed online at http://highlowproject.org/.