The Pink Dress Project began in Manhattan, NYC at the Lower Eastside Girls Club where teenagers photographed each other in pink dresses on nearby streets. The same dresses were then shipped to Club Balam, an indigenous girls photography program in southern Mexico. They next shipped to the Las Fotos Project in Los Angeles, California, a photography project for teenage girls. Lastly, they were sent to A VOICE in Pablo, Montana, where students at Two Eagle River School created photos in several communities in the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Nation.

The Pink Dress Photography Project used left-over pink dresses to help girls break the bounds of peer defined ‘normal’ behavior by learning to take risks in their art making.  The students entered a creative space that grown artists, photographers, performance artists, and activists inhabit regularly, which, I imagine, was a pretty incredible experience.

You can see the finished project and photos tonight, Friday, November 8th, at The Pink Dress Photography Project gallery opening at the ZACC! It's free admission from 5 to 8 p.m., and remember, the ZACC is now located at 216 West Main, next to The Shack at Main and Ryman. This is a really special show and I certainly want to shout out the amazing Two Eagle River School students who took part in the project. Photographers from the Salish & Kootenai Communities are Danielle Adler, Zion Bolan, Lee Anna Powell, Nikki Burke, Bojai Grant, Esperanza Orozco-Charlo, Chayla Russell, Chandra Whiteman LaForge, Chaise Yonkin, and the young people from Elmo in the 2018 Tribal Health Summer Youth Leadership Program.

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