Putting Lehigh in Focus

These are the many faces of Lehigh: black, white, Asian and Latino; serious, funny, wide-eyed and playful. For more than a year, Chester Toye ’17 has been capturing students’ images in black and white for a public art project that he hopes will unify students and improve the campus climate.

Toye’s project, “Lehigh in Focus,” grew out of a design class he took in his first year at Lehigh. He needed to replicate an artist but add his spin. Finding inspiration in graffiti artist Steve Powers and the French street artist JR, Toye ultimately decided to use his photography skills to create student portraits that reflect Lehigh’s diverse student population.

Toye also saw his project as a way to heal any simmering wounds from November 2013, when racial slurs were spray-painted on UMOJA House and the building was egged.

Confused at the time, Toye wondered whether Lehigh was the place for him. In middle school and high school, he said, he had worked hard to improve his surroundings and leave a mark.  After the incident, he joined the more than 1,000 students, faculty and staff who gathered on the University Front Lawn one night in protest over what had happened. Toye listened as student after student expressed their disappointment in the vandalism. 

“It gave me hope,” said Toye, 20, a former lacrosse player who is pursuing an Integrated Degree in Engineering, Arts and Sciences (IDEAS).

With a public art project, he felt he could create “something that was positive and uplifting, to give the campus some character and kind of help bring people together.”  He persevered. A $3,000 Strohl grant from Lehigh, along with faculty, staff and administrative support, helped to move the project forward.

Hoping to populate the campus with the diverse student images, Toye saw his efforts start to pay off this year when a 46-inch-by-76-inch portrait went up inside the Packer Avenue bus shelter on the Asa Packer campus. A collection of 32 of his images will also go up inside several Lehigh buses that loop around the university’s three campuses.

“It’s kind of surreal,” said Toye. “It’s been a year in the making.”

The images carry no text, no names. When people view them, he said, “I just want them to see people for people. I just want them to kind of forget about everything else and just focus on the personality. It doesn’t matter where someone’s from, the color of their skin, how much money they make.  But we all have these unique, and in some cases similar, personalities.”

Toye’s interest in photography happened naturally. Looking back at photos of himself as a toddler and adolescent, he always had a camera in his hand. (And, to his parents’ chagrin, he broke a few.) One summer when he had shoulder surgery, he was unable to do anything athletic, so he took photographs. He is self-taught.

For the ongoing project, Toye asks students to present a face that reflects their personality. Initially, he had to do some coaxing to get fellow students to participate, but now that his work is more widely known, he finds that students ask to be a part of the project.  And, they usually like what he is able to capture.

Toye hopes the project can help prevent hurtful acts such as the UMOJA  House vandalism and help reduce any fears or prejudices that people have based on someone’s skin color. 

“Say you hate people with blue skin. You don’t have a reason for hating them, but you’ve never been around a person with blue skin. You’re not comfortable around them, so you avoid them your whole life,” said Toye. “If I put up a picture of someone with blue skin on campus, and you have to walk past it every day, you’re going to become comfortable with it. You’re going to get used to seeing these images, and hopefully, you’re going to get used to different kinds of people, and subconsciously, become more of an accepting person without really having to do anything.”

The project has already helped one person—Toye himself. He said he not only feels better about Lehigh but also about his place here.

The project “helped me to see how many awesome people we have here on campus. Students, faculty, administrators, everyone wants to help me out, help me to push this,” Toye said. “It just really shows that if you’re motivated and passionate about something, if you work hard enough, you can make it happen. You can do a lot here. You’ve got to be willing to put the time in.”

Photos, unless otherwise specified, are by Chester Toye