Source: The Denver Post
Article by Claire Martin

Although Metropolitan State University of Denver student Birendra Dhakal has lived in the city since he was 13, he was shaped by his experience being born and raised in Nepal’s Goldhap refugee camp.

In the self-portrait he took for “Picture Me Here,” an exhibit of Denver refugee photographs, Dhakal stares unsmilingly from the counter of the gas station where he works a graveyard shift.

“This picture is black and white because nobody would want to work a graveyard shift at a gas station, and I thought that making it black and white would tell the story,” he said.

“It’s me at 12 a.m., alone, doing nothing, kind of scary. I’m in college now. … When I look at myself, I don’t see something very specific, but I have a dream inside me, and every day when I wake up, I think about that dream.”

That dream, in so many different guises, is what sustains so many refugees, including the group of Southeast Asians who worked all summer with digital storytelling professionals Brigid McAuliffe, Lauren Dorn and Erin Preston.

This was the second year for the “Picture Me Here” project, which involved Bhutanese, Tibetan, and Burmese refugees, most of them living in Mercy Housing/Grace Apartments in East Denver. Provided with digital cameras, the refugees photograph their homes and the East Colfax Avenue neighborhoods surrounding Mercy Housing/Grace Apartments.

Read more: “Picture Me Here” photography show captures views of Southeast Asian refugees – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_24276345/picture-me-here-captures-views-southeast-asian-refugees#ixzz2jnJJOUNq

Learn more about the “Picture Me Here” exhibit: http://www.picturemehere.org/