Professor Nydia Blas is nationally recognized for a body of photographic work entitled "The Girls Who Spun Gold." The collection of images were the result of a girl empowerment group that she founded after observing a lack of space and community for teen girls of African descent in her hometown, Ithaca, New York.
The group was active for about two years and, at its height, consisted of twelve young women from ages 13-17. It was a unique space that functioned based on mutual respect and care in an intimate learning environment. Professor Blas taught them about issues surrounding the constructs that she learned in college, such as race, gender and sexuality.
Additionally, they talked about real life and growing up in a small, predominately college town. As a result, the girls kept journals, started a dance group that performed at local events, deconstructed rap videos, and worked with the younger children at the center.
In 2016, Professor Blas completed her photographs of the girls. Five years later, with the help of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John D. Rockefeller Foundation Division of the Arts Priority Award, she returned to photograph them; some are now mothers, attending graduate school, or doing other things. She created eleven new images of "The Girls Who Spun Gold." The photographs reveal that they are indeed women now with their own lives, loves, dreams and children. The photos by name as they appear below: Looked Back At You, The Oppositional Gaze, Hold You Down, Light As A Feather, Samone With Ancestors Keys, Resana With The Stars in Her Eyes, Starring You, Growned Up.
