Revolutionary Tales: A Trio of Emerging Artists

"Polaroid is a classic medium associated with go-go," Tovin said, but he wasn't sure he wanted to commit to having all of the pictures be Polaroids. Maybe a mix of regular still shots with Polaroids, then? He ended up going down what he described as a "rabbit hole" where one consideration led to another.

"You think, well, maybe some of the things that are missing are the actual tangible objects that people hold dear-the CDs, the cassettes," Tovin said. "But then I'm still not really getting pictures of people. All right, let's introduce portraits. Should this be a linear installation, as in a traditional documentary, or should the installation be layered, and complicated and loud, just like the music is? Do I need text? A lot of the stories that people are telling me are not seen in the photographs. OK, I'm going to introduce text. Well, how am I going to showcase text on the wall without distracting from the photographs, the ephemera, the Polaroids and the portraits? I'm condensing the conversation that I've had with myself, my peers and my professors over the past year and a half."

Tovin worked on his go-go project concurrently with a series of photographs of a family in Shaw. For work like this, ethical questions acquire special significance.

"The level of transparency that I have with the people I photograph is not common for photojournalists-being open and honest about where these pictures are going, who could see them and what information is going to be attached, especially when children are involved. It's very important that how I depict the way they grew up doesn't affect their future," Tovin said.

"I have such a privilege to access people's lives and to enter and capture these unseen moments. Some of those moments people keep unseen for a reason, and they trust me enough to let me photograph them. What I do with that trust matters a lot to me. It keeps me up at night."