Phoenix photographer pairs passion, personal experience to connect with young students

Buzzy Sullivan’s entire world expanded when he got his first bike.

At least once a week, he would journey deep into the natural landscape of western Montana.

“I would play this game in my head where I would say, ‘I’m gonna ride my bike as far away from home as I can until I feel scared,'" he said in an interview with The Arizona Republic.

Looking back, Sullivan said the game was his way of checking in with himself to make sure he was still human, that he could still feel. As a kid navigating a traumatic family situation and unable to process his emotions, he spent a lot of time not feeling.

The connection his young mind made between landscapes and trauma only continued to evolve as he grew older, morphing into the foundation of his photography work: both how he creates it and how he teaches others to do so as well.

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Sullivan dedicates his photography to exploring areas of environmental trauma, such as Mount St. Helen’s, and uses them to illustrate natural responses to pain and destruction. He also teaches photography at Chandler-Gilbert Community College and through Kids in Focus, a nonprofit that pairs photographers with youth facing adversity.

When he moved to the Valley from Oregon in 2015, his personal experiences and professional growth drew him to Kids in Focus. Sullivan started mentoring kids in the program the next year.

“I was thinking of how to work with at-risk youth in Oregon through photography, and it kind of wasn’t coming together for me,” he said. “When I moved to Arizona, I was introduced to Kids in Focus, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re doing the thing that I was thinking about doing.’”

Once a mentee, now a mentor

At Kids in Focus, middle school students are paired with mentors for a nine-week after-school program. They start by learning in a classroom setting but eventually start exploring their community through the lens of their camera.

“(The kids) sense of pride (in their work) draws attention to that in the community and really teaches them so much about the power of their own voices, the power of their own perspective and who they are and can be in this world,” said Ann Alger Piraino, Kids in Focus exhibits director.

By the end of the program, they get to keep the cameras and their photos are featured in an exhibit.

A Kids in Focus exhibit, which included Sullivan’s photos, was presented at Civic Center Public Gallery inside the Scottsdale Civic Center Library during the summer.

One of the major components of the program is mentorship and mentoring, according to Sullivan, is all about relating to the kids, using photography as the medium to build connections. His own experience in being mentored as a skateboarder taught him that.

“He knows the power that photography (and skateboarding) had on his life as a youth,” said Sullivan’s wife, Vanessa Sullivan. “Having those older mentors, whether official or unofficial, having those role models, he knows how important that was for him. So it’s really important for him to be able to serve in that way as well.”

Elliot Smith was one of those mentors.

Sullivan found photography on his own as a 28-year-old skateboarding around Portland, but Smith pushed him to pursue further education, Sullivan said.

Smith, a Portland Community College, was the one who snuck his friend into the school's darkroom when Sullivan was a broke amateur photographer looking for a place to get his film developed.

“He said, ‘If anybody asks you, just say that Smith is your teacher,’” Sullivan said. That's exactly what he did, until he was approached by an older woman asking whose class he was in.

“She came up to me, she goes, ‘Hey, I always see you in here. Whose class are you in?’” Sullivan said. “I said, ‘I’m in Smith’s class.’ She goes, ‘I’m Smith.’”

Assuming he was a student, Smith allowed him to continue to use the dark room, as long as he promised to take one of her classes next semester.

Thanks to a Pell Grant and a dedicated girlfriend, Sullivan found himself enrolled in three community college classes a decade after he graduated from high school. He took courses at the school for three or four years before Smith encouraged him to attend art school.

Sullivan went on to earn a bachelor's from Oregon College of Art & Craft and a master's in fine arts from Arizona State University.

A ‘wonderful example’ of Kids in Focus connections

Sullivan had barely graduated high school. He said he would have dropped out if it wouldn’t have broken his single mother’s heart. But his experience at Portland Community College completely changed his opinion on education — and his life.

His former disdain for education comes as a surprise to those who've only known him as an educator and mentor.

“He’s just a natural-born creative and educator. It comes from his art," Piraino said. “It comes from his experience, and it comes through his experience. It really is very soulful and yet fun. He’s fun and witty and engaging.”

Having worked with him for some time, Piraino described Sullivan as a “rare individual”, able to use his experiences to connect with middle schoolers about what they’re going through.

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That makes perfect sense to Vanessa Sullivan.

“He really, of course, is very much a photographer, but he’s also very much at his heart an educator,” she said. “It’s about making art and growing his craft but also about educating other people and sort of sharing the beauty of photography and the skill of photography and the experience of photography with other people.”

The combination of his passion and his desire to use it to relate to mentees defines Sullivan as a mentor.

“He has this real innate desire and talent with connecting with other people and with particularly seeing when there’s a spark in someone that they might not yet see for themselves,” Vanessa Sullivan said.

Piraino said Sullivan was a “wonderful example” of the connections at the heart of Kids in Focus.

“It’s really that process of seeing and observing and framing and reframing with that tool of the camera in a trusting environment and an engaging relationship with a trusted mentor and a trusted adult that just has the power to alter their perspectives on themselves, on the world around them,” she said.

Relationships run deeper than photography

Sullivan was raised in a dysfunctional home. He described himself as an angry kid who got in a lot of trouble. That helps him relate to the students in Kids in Focus on a more personal level.

“They have very different backgrounds than me in that they grew up in an urban environment, but there’s so many similarities. And I think that I can just put my life experiences to use to help them navigate the path that they’re on,” he said.

Even with the challenges Sullivan experienced when he was younger, he still is overwhelmed by the stories some kids share with him.

“It is hard to believe that some of these kids are dealing with what they’re dealing with within two miles of where I live. It’s heartbreaking. It’s heart-wrenching,” he said. “It’s a level of poverty that I can’t even relate to. So the thing that fulfills me the most about working with Kids in Focus is the little tiny steps I see those kids take to process things.”

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Kids in Focus has also reframed his way of thinking about those around him, Sullivan said.

“I think by default we often define our community as pretty small. I’ve challenged myself in the last few years to define my community as large,” Sullivan said. “It’s different when you’re seeing these things that are going to have long-term negative impacts on somebody’s life. It’s different when you accept them as members of your community. You feel a need to like, ‘Oh, I have to help this person because they’re part of my community.’”

He said living in Portland, everything felt very compartmentalized. Phoenix changed that.

“What I love about Arizona, or Phoenix specifically, is all these different cultures, all these different people, are sharing space,” Sullivan said. “And really, it’s kind of beautiful.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kids in Focus mentor Buzzy Sullivan connects with kids through art