A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

In November, two Frederick Gunn School students, Daniel Conlan ’26 and YoYo Zhang ’24, were selected to participate in the 12th annual ASAP! Celebration of Young Photographers. Their artwork was among the top 60 photographs selected by a panel of professional photographers to be featured in a juried exhibition at Bryan Memorial Town Hall.

Zhang is producing an entire portfolio of work in AP Studio Art with an environmental theme. In this abstract compilation, two contrasting images seem to mirror one another. In the daylight version (right), which Zhang called “the ideal world,” there are plants and trees, but the image is fractured. In the nighttime image (left), which she called “the drastic one,” the landscape appears windswept, stark, and without plants. “It’s not an ideal situation,” she said, “and this one is cracking because it’s not what the real world is. It’s a broken dream.”

In 2021, when she was a freshman, two of Zhang’s photographs were selected for the Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards, the largest juried student art exhibition in the state. One of them, “Soul of Fire,” won her a prestigious Silver Key Award.