Alejandro’s difficult childhood in poverty challenged him and his sister to be creative when finding their next meal, often eating pecans they collected from trees. His story is one of the 46 individuals whose black and white portraits currently line the walls of the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery.
“There is this emptiness that makes you afraid of the world in a sense,” Alejandro said. “I think the gift of being hungry is that it’s made me strive for more.”
The exhibit, titled “About Hunger & Resilience,” created by Michael Nye, features individual photographs and audio narratives from across the United States. Each photograph in the gallery is of someone who has endured a significant period of hunger.
“There’s so much misconception about people that experience hunger. That they’re worthless. They’re not responsible,” Nye said. “But I saw, traveling around the country, [that] it’s mental illness, it’s injury, it’s natural disasters. It’s complicated. It’s not one thing at all.”
Nye is a former attorney, now pursuing photography. Over the course of four and a half years, he has traveled across North America, meeting with people from various backgrounds to learn about their experiences with hunger. The stories range from an unhoused student struggling to provide for her child, to a cowboy whose injury left him unable to work.
Amidst the diverse array of experiences, however, there is one that is shared: hunger.
“So many people live and die, and no one ever hears their story. Here, we have their voice and their presence,” said Nye during an artist talk at the gallery on April 18. “A big part of this exhibit is about their memory. It’s about not forgetting.”
The various displays offer no text, simply the name of each subject and a set of headphones. To learn about their stories, viewers must pause and actively choose to listen to each recording.
“It was really impactful, the uncomfortability of it all. You have to be standing there and listening to this person’s story for four or five minutes,” said first-year attendee Hannah Henderson. “Instead of going to an art gallery and being like, ‘I saw this, I saw this’ and leaving, this [exhibit] really makes you focus.”
Attendees stand in front of the portraits with headphones on, taking in the many stories of hunger and resilience.
Displayed inside the annex alongside Nye’s collection is “Circuit,” an exhibit created by Morgan Yacullo and curated by Sloane Harris, both undergraduate students. The photographs capture various parts of the food production at UC Santa Cruz; from images of flower pollination, to volunteers cooking meals, to students sharing food with one another.
The collection highlights the unseen journey through which food is cultivated, prepared and shared on campus. Images included in the annex blend as a dynamic collage, inviting viewers to experience a community cultivated through food.
“These photographs reveal shared tools, gestures and environments that reflect a collective response to unmet needs,” Yacullo said. “More than isolated services, these sites function as a living network where nourishment, labor and connection circulate through everyday acts of sustenance.”
The exhibit aims to showcase the importance of basic needs programs at UCSC. These on-campus locations provide students with free access to food, as it can be difficult for students without a meal plan to access food on campus. Produced entirely at UCSC, the food is grown on the campus farm, packaged and prepared by volunteers, and distributed through free cafes and markets on campus.
“[Nye’s] exhibition works to talk about hunger and resilience,” said Grace Marinovich, a general gallery intern. “We worked to show in the annex this extension of the ideas of hunger and resilience through the UCSC campus initiatives, like Cowell Coffee Shop and the Redwood Free Market.” 
UCSC undergraduate artists Morgan Yacullo and Sloane Harris pose in front of their “Circuit” exhibit.
With its scattered placement of colorful photographs, “Circuit” is a stark contrast to the linear arrangement of black and white portraits in Nye’s collection. “About Hunger & Resilience” captures the humanity of hunger, while “Circuit” reminds attendees of the dedication that exists to combat it.
Michael Nye, Sloane Harris, Morgan Yacullo and leaders of basic needs initiatives around the UCSC campus address the crowd with Nye’s work as a backdrop.
“Nye’s portraits and narratives illuminate the profound individual and collective impacts of hunger,” Yacullo said, “[and] ‘Circuit’ responds by turning our gaze toward the local networks of care and resistance that emerge in its wake.”
Both exhibits will be displayed at the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, located next to the Cowell Coffee Shop, until June 6th.
“Together, both exhibitions invite us to think expansively about hunger,” Yacullo said. “Not only as a condition of lack, but as a site of potential, action, and transformation.”
