Alumni and faculty featured in this edition of The Five reckon with the historic Los Angeles wildfires, human trafficking, race and identity, and Americana culture across medium and practice. One documents the destruction of his home city, while another returns to hers to help her subject reconnect with their roots.

1. As the devastating fires began ravaging the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles this month, alumnus and photographer Kevin Cooley (MFA 2000 Photography and Related Media) was on the ground documenting it with his camera, unaware he was on the verge of losing his own precious home in Altadena. In a Cultured Magazine roundup of experiences of LA artists, Cooley says, “This tragedy is beckoning me to reevaluate what truly matters and to break the cycle of endless accumulation of material possessions—the very things that, in part, fuel the increasing severity of these wildfires.” 

2. “Filmmaking is about collaboration—your story may be your own, but the process of telling it is always shared,” says recent alumnus Hsi Cheng (BFA 2024 Film) in an interview with UK Film Review about growing up in Taiwan; what inspires her as a filmmaker, and making her acclaimed documentary short Find Me on a limited budget. Cheng’s film, which made the festival rounds at DOC NYC and the Big Apple Film Festival, explores the experience of a human trafficking victim trying to reconnect with her birth family, and she hopes to expand it to a full feature in the future.

3. Over three decades after a post-graduation stint chauffeuring a limousine, Bushwick-born alumnus Kathy Shorr (BFA 1988 Photography) has a new book of photographs to show for it. Named for the titular vehicle, Limousine (2024, Lazy Dog Press) is a collection of vivid images of a range of passengers shot in black and white, both a time capsule of late 1980s fashion and a timeless glimpse of humanity in all its glory. “The limousine, in ‘Limousine,’ is not a mark of élitism, but a great equalizer,” writes the New Yorker. “The subjects of her photographs are on their way to new lives, too: growing up, graduating, getting married. ‘Limousine’ is, in a sense, a family album, though it connects people whose paths never consciously crossed. Its subjects don’t share genes or a name. What they have in common is an important moment spent in the back of a special, celebratory car, preserved forever by a stranger’s camera.”

4. Ancestral Call, a new film focused on artist Danielle Scott (BFA 2001 Fine Arts), is soon set to air on PBS this spring as part of the American Masters series. The filmmakers and Scott, whose mixed media explores themes of identity reclamation, race, and history, have also been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She recently spoke to her hometown newspaper, the Jersey City Times, emphasizing the impact of the late Jack Whitten, a beloved SVA faculty member who encouraged her to find her purpose through her work beyond painting. “I played it very safe with my old paintings. But the more I learned, the more I was able to expand what I did,” she says. “When I was working on Ancestral Call, I felt like I had thousands of ancestors right behind me.”

5. Digital Camera World recently covered a powerful photography project by alumnus and SVA faculty member Wendel A. White (BFA 1980 Photography). Both a book (Radius Books, 2024) and a corresponding exhibition on view through April at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Manifest: Thirteen Colonies takes a close look at singular items from public and private collections that represent Black history and oppression. Photographed in stark contrast to a black background, “Each item is treated with equal respect,” the piece notes, “Making it clear that every item is a weighted and essential piece of forensic evidence of Black life and history in the United States.”