photo courtesy of Karina Graziani, Athletic Communications
Senior pitcher Hannah Harley winds up at Point Park’s home field, Fairhaven Park, in a March 24 game against Carlow University last year.
The living room of her apartment was under construction – with artwork. Hannah Harley, a softball player with a major in photography, is in the process of creating a thought-provoking project for the annual Senior Thesis show, a project that will provoke questions about pornography and race.
She grew up in Indiana, Pa. in a rural setting with chickens in her bedroom, living with no internet or television.
“That conservative growing-up has fueled a lot of what’s coming out,” said Harley, explaining what helped create her artwork.
When she was younger, she described her self as a “little menace” with her parents and siblings.
“My sister said I was growing up to be a villain,” said Harley. “I would ask a lot of questions, find a lot of loopholes, and exploit a lot of people, but I’ve gotten a lot better over the years.”
It wasn’t just being a menace that filled her childhood; softball was another part. Her first softball game was at the age of four, when she first played on an all boys team. She disliked the game for the first three years due to the difficulties she had to overcome.
“I was the only girl in an all boys team and I cried a lot the first time. My dad made me go and I would always cry every practice because all these boys would bully me. My brother tried to teach me how to throw and I ended up getting all these bruises,” Harley said. “But after four years it has gotten a lot better.”
Harley began admiring the sport later in her life, even though she still feels like the underdog. Her best position in softball is on the mound.
“I’m not exceptionally fast but I have a good break on my ball and I can be sneaky so [the coaches] said ‘She can be our number two pitcher,’ but I end up getting results,” Harley said.
Harley has dabbled in other positions, but she’s been pitching for the past eight or nine years. One of the first games she remembers was when she first pitched in her freshman year against the best team of the league.
“I was nervous at first but when we won I was shocked,” Harley said. “The team we were up against never lost a conference game and this was their first time losing this season.”
Even though she sees herself just getting “results,” her coach Michelle Coultas saw her as a valued player.
“Hannah is a seasoned pitcher who works very well with the catcher,” said Coultas. “She’s a reliable player and is a big part of the team.”
She was named First Team All Conference in pitching last year. Within her team, she displays great senior leadership among her teammates.
Softball isn’t the only thing that isn’t keeping her busy this semester. With the Senior Thesis coming up, she has been hard at work perfecting her project. Themes in life such as relationships, use of pornography, racism, sexism and inequality has helped shaped her project.
Her love for photography started five years ago in Paris, France during an international softball tournament.
“Paris was such a picturesque city and so photogenic,” Harley said. “It’s perfect and fabulous.”
When she started as a freshman in photography, however, she was bewildered with the technical terms, and didn’t know any off the basics when it comes to shooting with a camera.
Her first camera class began in spring of 2013 with Intro to Photography with Chris Rolinson. She considered her first critique in this class overwhelming.
“I remember when we were doing critiques and I was just shaking. I only shot in JPEGs and didn’t know about raw files,” Harley said. “The pictures weren’t good and they were bad but someone was nice enough to pretend they were good.”
She learned more and more over the semester and after her sophomore year, she took her first film class and that was where she learned, truly, how a camera operated on manual. It took her getting out of digital to really understand photography.
Not only did she learn so much about photography, her style of photography has taken a departure over the years.
“After my sophomore year, I thought about doing senior portraits but after awhile I hated it,” Harley said. “It felt too commercialized.”
Her style has evolved into creating photographs and art that not only provoke feelings, but also make you question yourself, people around you and society in general.
Harley’s first project that related to her thesis was her photo project “Table Manners.” She explored themes of intimacy, relationships and the gray areas that blur the lines.
“A whole bunch of experiences that I’ve had made me realized that we need to address issues when it comes to communication in relationships,” Harley said.
“Portraits of Ex-Lovers” was another project she created to explore interpersonal relationships. She discussed experiences with friends regarding relationships and how it has affected them, and wanted to document herself taking photographs of her exes to see how it made her feel.
“Some felt ok with it because it was amazing there was a level of trust between us, Harley said. “It led for some interesting dialogue.
“It was nice to catch up because, honestly, we’re friends.”
The projects were an a part of her attempt to shine light on the issues regarding interpersonal relationships in the U.S. “Portrait of Ex-Lovers” was an awkward ordeal to document; it became one of Harley’s signature works at Point Park.
The development of her Senior Thesis project began with another photo project about Tinder. She was trying to understand the heterosexual male, relationships and what elements they contained. One night, she figured out what to study – porn.
“I don’t understand porn and I decided to do research,” Harley said.
She scaled back and decided to buy porn magazines to try to understand, for herself, why men watch porn and what it has to do with heterosexual relationships. Some photos felt sterile to her, while others felt demeaning and disgusting.
She had the idea that seemed crazy but made a statement – cut them into small lines and create a collage depicting sex and bodies. What she stumbled upon while creating these collages and realized that a majority of women the porn magazines were white.
“I was getting these variety packs after variety pack and realized every single image was a white woman, it confused me,” Harley said.
She found out women of color were significantly less chosen in porn and also dating websites such as OK Cupid. She built her project on how porn is reflected on our society regarding sexual education, racism and relationships. It inspired her to create a mosaic collage of the women in pornography to send the message that society has a preference of what a beautiful, ideal woman should be for a male. Her project helps highlight the problems with porn in relationships and why we need an open dialogue to discuss these issues.
Harley was accepted by the Parsons School of Design in New York, to attend graduate school.
Her professor, April Friges, knows that she’s gone far in her work and hope’s she can go farther.
“Most importantly, Hannah is pulling from contemporary culture – issues that we often overlook or just consider mainstream or even worse, normal.
“She is deeply invested in helping her peers both in and out of school. I often find myself looking to Hannah during critiques because I know she’s not afraid to counter my opinions and speak freely,” Friges said.
