This submission to the visual theme series titled “Moments of Joy” for the Community-Driven Archives (CDA) blog comes from Myra Khan, a student worker here at CDA who is currently a sophomore at Arizona State University (ASU) studying Sustainability with minors in Political Science and Transborder Studies. Myra provided a brief synopsis of why this image brought her joy. Here is her statement:
“As a dancer myself, my favorite picture from the BJ Bud collection is of these two dance partners who participated in the 1982 Farrah’s Dance Contest. Although we don’t know who the two men in the image are, I absolutely love looking at the collection of photos of them performing onstage, posing with their awards, and candidly embracing. There is so much warmth, energy, and excitement evident in each image and I always catch myself wondering what must have been going on between each photo. Every time I see their carefree smiles, I can’t help but smile myself.”
As you can see from Myra’s statement, the “Moments of Joy” series highlights images we encounter during our community archiving work here at ASU and provides a moment of healing to reflect upon the erasure of stories and the history of under documented communities like that of the LBGTQ+ community here in Arizona.
Contact me, Jessica Salow, with feedback at Jessica.Salow@asu.edu, as I would love to hear from you your thoughts regarding the work we here at ASU are doing in community archiving around Arizona. We would also love to hear from you regarding your Moments of Joy. We also want your feedback on what you would like to see from us in future blog posts. See you next week!