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Art project will put faces to those who heart Yakima

Photographer says, ‘If you hate the place, don’t sign up’

By Pat Muir, Yakima Herald-Republic
Published: April 23, 2017, 7:59pm

Ever wanted to see your face, larger than life, on the side of a building?

Downtown Yakima will be festooned with dozens of large-scale black-and-white portraits of Valley residents this August, the result of a participatory art project from local photographer Sally Tonkin and civic-pride nonprofit I Heart Yakima. And applications are open. There’s only one caveat.

“Working with I Heart Yakima, it’s just about people love where they live,” Tonkin said. “That’s the only requirement. If you hate the place, don’t sign up.”

The local project, part of an international effort called “Inside Out,” will be funded by I Heart Yakima. Tonkin, a former photojournalist and high school photography teacher who retired from Davis High School last year to focus on her own photo projects, will shoot the portraits between now and July. They’re planning on doing at least 50, probably at the 3-foot-by-4-foot-5-inch size at which the international Inside Out Project organization prints its images.

The portraits will be affixed with wheat paste to exterior walls of downtown buildings owned by landlord and downtown advocate Joe Mann. The exact locations haven’t been decided yet, I Heart Yakima co-founder Jessica Moskwa-Hawkins said.

She and Tonkin had been interested in the Inside Out Project, the brainchild of mysterious French photo-graffiti artist JR, who started the project using money from his 2011 TED prize. For Tonkin, who left Yakima for the Seattle area after graduating from high school in the early 1970s, the project seemed like a good way to highlight the diversity and breadth of the Valley she returned to in 2012.

But she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d pull it off until Moskwa-Hawkins and I Heart Yakima got involved. Moskwa-Hawkins had also wanted to do what the Inside Out Project calls an “action,” so when she heard Tonkin mention it at a PechaKucha night, she offered her organization’s help.

“For me, that was a great gift,” Tonkin said. “These guys have connections and energy. I looked at them and said, ‘That’s the perfect fit for me.'”

Earlier this month, I Heart Yakima went public with the effort, posting a request for volunteers and nominees on its website and social media feeds. People started responding that very first day. It’s a testament to people’s feelings about their community, Moskwa-Hawkins said, adding that participants’ reasons for volunteering will be displayed with text accompanying their portraits on a website for the project.

“We really want to celebrate what people love about Yakima and use that as an opportunity to bring people together,” she said.

Tonkin, whose online portfolio shows a knack for simply composed but arresting portraits, plans a minimalist approach to the project using clean backgrounds and focusing on her subjects without artifice. The idea is to depict a real cross-section of the Yakima Valley community, which remained dear to her even when she was living elsewhere.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t love the place,” she said of staying in the Seattle area after college. “There wasn’t opportunity for me. But it is an evolving community. I think art like this can be a catalyst for opportunity.”

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