Madison Casagranda submitted photos from her project, The Black Stories Project, to Communication Arts magazine and placed as a finalist
BYU photography student Madison Casagranda recently placed as a finalist in a Communication Arts (CA) competition, and her work with tintype photography will be featured in the CA magazine. “This award is an opportunity for me to connect with the art community in a meaningful way. It also gives me confidence and helps me stay motivated to continue submitting my work for opportunities like this,” Casagranda said. Casagranda’s submission to the contest included pictures from The Black Stories Project, which is a collection of photographs of Black people in Utah. She used tintype photography to set the mood of the images. “I hope people will walk away thinking about something they hadn’t before and realize that the human experience ranges vastly. How that experience is shared affects our understanding of it. That’s one reason why I feel the tintype process is so poignant in my show,” Casagranda said. The Black Stories Project was featured in the Harris Fine Arts Center gallery 303, and has been featured in other galleries in Utah. Casagranda said she’s still working on adding to and improving on the project. “The Black Stories Project is still an ongoing project for me. I am currently working to continue to exhibit it, add more pieces to it, and potentially publish it as a book,” Casagranda said. Casagranda said she is grateful to all the people who participated in The Black Stories Project, especially Alexandria Byrd and Trissie and Clate Tirrell, who were featured in the photographs that Casagranda submitted to the contest with Communication Arts. “I wanted to connect myself to the Black community through art. In other places I have lived, I’ve had more of that interaction, but here in Utah I feel like it’s easy to live in a world where everyone looks like you and you don’t have to think about the issues facing marginalized groups,” Casagranda said.