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Joanna Lis
Head of the CLAS
Joanna Lis, a junior political science major with a dual minor in European studies and East-Central European studies, was thinking about the historical variability of languages when she shot an award-winning photo in Poland last summer.
Entitled “Ksiegarnia,” the moving photo posted below captured third place in the study abroad student category of the 2007 Global Culture Photo Contest sponsored by the University of Florida International Center and the Transnational and Global Studies Center.
Taken in the Jewish quarter of Kraków called Kazimierz, the photo depicts a girl sitting next to sign that says BOOKSHOP in seven different languages. The original full-color photo was altered by Lis to make it appear monochromatic.
Lis, a 21-year-old originally from Lake Worth, Fla., participated in the UF Center for European Studies’ Summer in Poland program in 2007, living in both Kraków and Wrocaw. She is fluent in Polish and active in the UF Polish Student Association. She attended a fine arts magnet high school in West Palm Beach called Dreyfoos School of the Arts, where she studied painting and printmaking.
“I see a photo as a chronicle of a moment of time,” Lis says. “I like to observe, capture, and interpret people’s behavior with my photos.” The weirdest thing she ever caught on film? “Fire-breathing street performers.”
Other awards garnered recently by Lis include a Harriet Irsay scholarship from the American Polish Institute for an essay accompanied by her paintings on the theme “Cultural Transitions in Poland” and a Center for European Studies’ travel grant to Poland.
All of the winning photos can be seen at Grinter Gallery from January 22 through February 8, or online at http://www.ufic.ufl.edu/photocontest07.htmn
Credits
Writer
Gail Keeler
