Common Humanity

from Method | Fall 2021

by The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Alumni Notes

PHOTOS FROM CHATTANOOGA AND RUSSIAN SISTER CITY STRENGTHEN BONDS

by SHAWN RYAN

A handshake. A smile. A conversation. A connection.

Those will make a difference in the world. A lasting difference, Irina Khmelko says.

“We will change this world one person at a time. If we can see each other as people, we can have a better planet,” she says.

Citizen diplomacy is a sentiment first expressed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in the late 1950s, but it still holds true today, says Khmelko, UC Foundation professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The Sister City Association of Chattanooga, of which Khmelko is a member, and the city’s Office of Multicultural Affairs collaborated to organize a cross-cultural competition that brought Chattanoogans, including those at UTC, together with residents of the Russian city of Nizhny Tagil, one of Chattanooga’s sister cities. Also included were sister cities to Nizhny Tagil—Krivoy Rog in Ukraine, Brest in Belarus, Novokuznetsk and Evpatoria in Russia and Cheb in the Czech Republic.

In the competition, titled “World Through the Eyes of Children and Youth,” participants took photos in four categories: reporting, portrait, landscape and city landscape. The purpose was twofold, to identify and support talented young people in photography and to strengthen the relationship between Chattanooga and Nizhny Tagil. Two age groups competed against each other: 10 to 17 and 18 to 30.

In Chattanooga, photos were entered by students from UTC, the McCallie School, Chattanooga School for the Creative Arts and the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences. Forty-nine photos from 29 entrants were chosen; the youngest photographer selected was 15, the oldest was 22.

Winning photos were hung in Chattanooga City Hall. An opening ceremony for the exhibition was attended by, among others, the winning photographers, former Chattanooga Mayr Andy Berke and Karen Claypool, president of the Sister City Association of Chattanooga, which sponsored the competition. A similar exhibition was organized and attended by Irina Darenskaya and Vladimir Mitin, members of the Sister City Association in the Nizhny Tagil.

“These projects allowed our Chattanoogans and people in Russia to communicate via pictures and understand each other by looking at what and how children and youth in both countries see in the world and what it is they are paying attention to,” according to an event press release. “It has been an eye-opening experience to many of our students and community members and certainly contributed to a better understanding between people in the two countries.”

When Russians saw the photos taken in Chattanooga, they “were very much impressed,” Khmelko says. “It humanized a lot of experiences when they saw how our children see the world.”

The same was true in Chattanooga, especially with portraits of Russian people, she says. “The major response was, ‘Look at those faces. How amazingly beautiful.’”

In fact, she says, if you didn’t know that some of the portraits were Russians or Americans, it might be hard to tell the difference.

“You certainly could look at that person and think they’re from Chattanooga,” Khmelko says.

Russian landscapes, while beautiful, were a tad different. Located in the Ural Mountains in Siberia, Nizhny Tagil has mild summers but long, harsh winters, so Chattanooga doesn’t look much the same.

“They can get 10 feet of snow and be minus-30 degrees,” Khmelko says, laughing.