How do you make a space your own? And how do you inhabit it? These questions had been floating through my mind since the first week of school, and as I got to know more of the freshman class and began spending more time in other dorms, I realized that the process of moving in is unique to each person. As a photographer, I was particularly drawn to the idea of students’ dorm rooms as an expression of identity and as a backdrop to their daily lives.

When I set out to shoot for this series, my goal was a kind of “environmental portraiture”: images that conveyed not only the subjects’ characters but also their interactions with spaces they had fashioned for themselves. In total, I visited six residence halls (Clark, Bennet, WestCo, Butts A and B, Nicholson, and 200 Church) and photographed 23 people, not all of whom are pictured. My hope is that these images will inspire viewers to broaden their own lenses and to consider their personal interactions with their own spaces.