It is mid fall, 2011. I am sitting with 17-year-old Juan in the lunchroom of the vocational high school where he is now enrolled in a welding program. We are looking through the photos he took as a fifth-and sixth-grader, which he’d used to position himself as a grateful son and as a valued member in school and in his youth ministry. Readers will remember him as Gabriel, whose photo of his mom in the kitchen sparked a declaration of his explosive love for her. He praised her help “with being a child” and noted the ways her “creativity” in the kitchen earned him a special place in his school culture. Like some of the other participants in the study, “Juan” chose a new pseudonym to fit his present self, and as he reflects on his past self, figured in the photos before him, he periodically chuckles and asks, with a slight tone of embarrassment, “What was I thinking back then? I must have thought I was so cool.”

“Back then,” in our last interview at the end of sixth grade, we had talked at great length about his “gangsta style” change from fifth to sixth grade, which he attributed to his older friends at church. “I’m like, ‘Yo, why do you wear white tees under your shirts and all that?’ ‘’Cause that's gangsta style,’ they said.” At the time, he relished his time with the “older kids” who accepted him, and he wanted to adopt their style. He also confessed he was trying harder to “make my mom happy.”

These past sentiments don't seem to occur to him now as he looks through his old photographs; he can't remember why he would have taken them. But as we conclude our interview, his parting words shine a light on how the photography project related to his sixth-grade self at the time. He says: