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How they see it
A dozen students at St. Mary's College of Maryland offer their take on the county through photo projects on the people and their struggles and the natural beauty
Friday, Dec. 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photo by Katie Krieger
Bobby Lumpkins visits with Katie Krieger several days before he began his prison sentence. Krieger, an SMCM senior, focused on Lumpkins' case and the plight of watermen for her photojournalism project.
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Facing her computer screen, Katie Krieger scanned through her collection of photos about Bobby Lumpkins' arrest and conviction for illegal rockfishing. She talked about the plight of watermen in St. Mary's County. Krieger had been studying the subject and taking related photos for the past several months.
She talked about how friendly the people were at Golden Eye Seafood, Lumpkins' business, and at Courtney's restaurant. She also noted the value of the laws that govern fishing.
"I didn't want to take sides," she said. "I became increasingly aware how complicated it is."
Krieger of Silver Spring was talking Monday about her photojournalism project as she sat with classmates in the digital lab at Montgomery Hall at St. Mary's College of Maryland on Monday.
For the past semester, Krieger and the 11 other students in her class have ventured out into the community to tell a story with photographs about some aspect of St. Mary's County — homelessness, the flight center at the airport, the dropout rate at Great Mills High School, Buzzy's Country Store in Ridge, volunteer firefighters.
Krieger's collection, along with nine other projects, will be presented at "Below the Surface: St. Mary's County," a photojournalism show, at the college today, Dec. 11, through Dec. 14.
Gabriela Bulisova, visiting assistant professor of art and teacher of the class doing the "Below the Surface" project, said the idea was to encourage the college students to interact more with the St. Mary's County community. "I wanted to get the students outside of the safety of the campus community, and allow them to meet community members," Bulisova said, noting that it was a challenging assignment to the students. "I think they've been pushing and pushing hard. It's not easy. These are self-generated topics."
Cecelia Thomas of Loveville, one of the students in Bulisova's class, grew up here and has long family roots in St. Mary's. She chose to explore the county's past through those family roots, focusing on her grandfather's and father's experience as African-Americans living here.
Thomas said she was surprised by the willingness of her grandfather, John I. Price of Hollywood, to talk about the issue. "My grandfather had a lot to say," she said.
Price told his granddaughter about the difficulty caused by unequal pay from the 1930s and on. "White people didn't pay black people any money," Thomas said her grandfather told her. So, in general, black people had to walk to work. They couldn't afford cars.
However, Price also talked about the kindness of people in the county and how his employer helped him get into a new home and purchase that first car, Thomas said.
Thomas' photos depict her family gatherings, items in their homes, Price staring out the window as he reminisced.
Charles Hobbs of La Plata, another student in the class, was also already familiar with St. Mary's. However, he was surprised to discover that there is a small airport here and that a flight center is a tenant there. "I had no idea," he said.
When Hobbs was 12, he took flight lessons in Indian Head. The topic seemed like a perfect match. Hobbs worked with the Piedmont Flight Center at the St. Mary's County Airport and took two flights for his project. His aerial shots depict some angles of St. Mary's that were new to him.
It was his first view of the renovated wharf in Leonardtown, he said, and he was surprised that there was an oil storage facility in Piney Point.
Students Tina Giordano of Baltimore County and Ryan Gugerty of Annapolis decided to tackle homelessness in St. Mary's for their project.
"I didn't know how bad it was," Giordano said. "There's people like living in the woods. I don't know, kind of crazy."
Giordano and Gugerty received assistance from the Three Oaks Center as they visited the woods where homeless people live in lean-tos and an abandoned trailer.
It wasn't an entirely discouraging topic, Gugerty noted. "There are people who are trying to get out of homelessness, and that's positive."
Giordano and Gugerty's photos show some of the miserable living conditions for the homeless, as well as photos of people working at Three Oaks to change their situation.
Krieger, once she described her project and showed some of her photos, sort of laughed and confessed.
"To tell you the truth, for the first three years of going here, I was generally unaware of life off the college," Krieger.
She said that most SMCM students don't go far off campus and that many of those trips are to the Green Door, a bar in Park Hall.
"We feel very isolated from everything else," she said. "I personally wanted to branch out. I love the county a lot and wanted to get involved with something important," she said. "I'd like to see more interaction with the community. We don't want the big divide."
Bulisova hopes that members of the community visit the students' exhibit, she said. "None of this would be done without their support."
