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“99 Columbians” Depicts Student Diversity
B y Da n i e l l a Za l c m a n ’09
When Angela Radulescu ’11 stumbled
across Bennett Hong ’11’s
Facebook photo albums of
friends and classmates, she was impressed.
Radulescu, then photo editor of Spectator,
had always wanted to create a unique,
Columbia-centric photography project, and
Hong, whose portraits she found remarkably
intimate and crisp, seemed like the
perfect partner. So she approached him
with an idea halfway through the 2009
fall semester: photograph 99 students in
their dorm rooms to create a
portrait of Columbia’s diverse
student body.
Hong quickly agreed, and
the two created a Facebook
group to gauge student interest.
Within three days, the
pair had 100 students volunteering
to be subjects.
And so the “99 Columbians”
project was born. Radulescu,
a neuroscience and
behavior major with a concentration
in economics, and
Hong, a pre-med East Asian languages
and cultures major with a concentration
in economics, didn’t often have much
time to spare. But the duo used every
moment they could for the rest of the semester
to run from dorm to dorm, spending
as much as four hours with each
subject. They discussed everything from
one student’s summers spent teaching at
clown camp to another’s move from Afghanistan
to the United States as part of a
conflict resolution program.
“There are so many unusual
stories that emerge
when you take the time to
interact with someone on
this level,” says Hong. At the
busiest point of the project,
he scheduled up to four
shoots in a single day, making
it a rule to spend roughly
two hours talking and two
hours photographing.
Ryan Bubinksi ’11 devoted
his winter break to creating an
interactive online gallery of the
Bennett Hong ‘11 and Angela Radulescu ‘11
sought to chronicle the diversity of the Columbia
student body.
Photo: Daniella Zalcman ‘09
exhibit at 99columbians.com. Robyn Burgess
’10 volunteered to manage the public
relations. On April 9, Radulescu and Hong
held an exhibit in Lerner Hall to showcase
their work and contributed art to several
other campus events organized by CUArts
and CCSC.
“We wanted to photograph Columbians
with their own ways of being,” Radulescu
says. “These are students with a diverse
range of interests who are artists and scientists
and athletes at the same time. Discovering
that range of talents in this community
was an amazing experience.”
Alumni Giving
MAKES IT POSSIBLE.
Did you know about HALF of Columbia
College students receive financial aid
All admitted students—regardless of
their financial status—deserve full access to
the Columbia experience. There are two
ways for you to help: 1) Endowment
giving—Kluge matches available
2) College Annual Fund
giving.columbia.edu/scholarships101 Watch and listen to Dean Moody-Adams & our students.