HOLDUP in the HOOD / wealth in recession "The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph". "It is not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed". Sebastiao Salgado I have taken two approaches in the photography of these children. One is largely black & white and photojournalistic in nature. This approach includes shooting formal portraits of the children that are then printed for the curriculum I teach while documenting the classroom activity and their neighborhood environment. I am interested in trying to see what they see when they walk out of their homes, on the way to school or to play and back home again. I feel their visual connection to their community and neighborhood has much to do with how they see their future. The second approach taken is more conceptual and premeditated. I substitute the child's face with their drawing and/or the finished collage face, thereby creating a mask. I then pose and photograph them for a second time, the first having been the initial portrait. Overall my aim with both approaches is to shape what the viewer is perhaps not seeing or does not wish to see. I want to investigate what lies outside the viewers' daily experience and what my subjects choose to reveal as well as to hide. I see in this exchange a confrontation surrounding issues of race, class and gender as well as images of the "other". Francis Crisafio 2012