Marquette Welch, a rising senior at East Boston High School and an Emerging Leader (youth participant) in the Summer Leadership Program, (SLP) a collaboration between IBA's summer youth program and The City School of Brookline, offered a revealing and provocative glimpse at the feelings, goals and struggles of her peers in a recent solo photographic exhibit entitled Voices of the City School at La Galería at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, 85 West Newton Street. Welch, who has participated in IBA-Cacique's Youth Learning Center (YLC) for several years, pitched the idea for the exhibit to Summer Leadership Program leaders Michal Shapiro of IBA-Cacique YLC and Ruby Reyes, co-director of The City School, who helped coordinate the show with La Galería curator Anabel Vázquez Rodriguez. Over two dozen SLP participants were photographed and profiled in the exhibit. About 40 guests of all ages, including SLP participants and family members as well as neighbors, attended the August 13 opening reception and artist talk for the three-day exhibit.

Each entry in the exhibit consisted of a photo and a brief biographical sketch of the student, with a couple of introductory paragraphs followed by responses to Welch's interview questions. Nasteho, an 18 year old Somali immigrant who lives in Roxbury, offered her thoughts on having recently observed Ramadan, the Muslim month of prayer and fasting and Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. "I am on a spiritual high because it was wonderful finding out what it is like not to be able to eat what I want," she mused. Megan, a 16 year old from Wakefield, described her challenges in a school that is highly competitive academically, dealing with a romantic break-up, being aware of her position of privilege and aspiring to become an activist in race and class issues. Ziquelle, 19, of Jamaica Plain, challenged widely-held notions of gender identification and discussed his own trans-gender-identity.

Welch designed the exhibit herself, inspired by the Humans of New York and Portraits of Boston photo-biographical blogs. In her artistic statement, Welch wrote, "Just like with Humans of New York and Portraits of Boston, I will take pictures of participants who approve of me using their story and record their stories. Through stories in the gallery, I will highlight some of the wonderful things youth are doing despite having to deal with institutional systems. Often the stories of young people of color in the city are never told. If they are told, they only focus on the negative. I want to tell the positive side of their stories." Welch asked her subjects to describe their passions, their current struggles, their strategies for dealing with those adversities, what they would advise themselves if they could go back 10 years and what they hope to be doing 10 years from now. Welch, whose top three college choices are Lesley University, Syracuse University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, responded to her own question with the goal of being a working photographer in ten years' time.