Love Through the Eyes of Baltimore Youth

Growing up in inner-city Baltimore can be difficult. But it can also be beautiful, according to 11 high school students who participated in a photo project with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Adolescent Health, part of CDC's Prevention Research Centers Program.

Asked to choose a photo topic based on their lives, the teens, part of the center's Youth Advisory Committee, chose love. To learn about photography and complete the project, the juniors and seniors spent a year working with a professional photojournalist and researchers from the center and the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"They wanted to show that they see a lot of love in their lives," said Jayne Blanchard, a communications specialist for the Center. She said the participants live in mostly low-income neighborhoods where gang violence is not uncommon.

Ms. Blanchard recalls the participants saying, "We want to go against the stereotype people think we are living in. We are not saying it isn't hard, but we encounter love every day."

The teens took pictures of different expressions of love they saw in nature, their homes, and their communities. The photos have been displayed at exhibits across Baltimore and appear in a 2008 calendar.

Center Director Freya Sonenstein, PhD, said the project fit with the Center's theme of promoting adolescent health and preparing teenagers for adulthood.

"Health interventions can take many forms," she said. "For teens, especially, feeling love and learning how to illustrate this feeling through photographs of their family, friends, and communities reinforces their understanding of their own strengths and resources."

To download a copy of the calendar in PDF format, visit the Center's Web site.*

Additional Information

• CDC Prevention Research Centers
• Adolescent Health
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Adolescent Health*