By Menachem Wecker
Two weeks before Jahwai “Poppy” Lynch completed her Tumblr blog, Project 365, in which she posted 365 photos she took between June 2010 and June 2011, the GW junior, who is majoring in political science with a minor in Mandarin Chinese, realized the blog project was publishable.
A native of Cambridge, Mass., Ms. Lynch emailed a link to her site to several Boston-based publications and explained the gist of her project – an attempt to improve her photography skills and to slow down and find beauty in her life each day.
Though she was hoping for a reply, Ms. Lynch never expected a response from a Boston Globe editor. “I was both delighted and utterly shocked,” she said.
A photo essay with 67 selected images from Ms. Lynch’s blog appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine and on the paper’s website in “One Year of My Life in Photos.”
“I could never have imagined the response I received when my photos were published,” said Ms. Lynch.
Her friends were ecstatic, but her parents were happier. “They plan on framing the article – embarrassing in a sweet way,” said Ms. Lynch, who also received congratulatory messages from professors, GW alumni and some anonymous comments on her Tumblr site.
“My second grade teacher even reached out to me,” she said. “I feel incredibly fortunate to live a life surrounded by such wonderfully warm and kind people.”
References to GW surface in 13 of the 67 photos that appeared in the Globe, from campus locations like Corcoran Hall, Phillips Hall, Trustees’ Gate and a duck on Kogan Plaza to a WRGW broadcast, a Frisbee game on campus and tickets to a Bob Dylan concert in the Charles E. Smith Center.
Ms. Lynch first chose to come to GW for its “rich resources,” reputation as a “political hot bed” and to escape the New England cold, she said. “I was unsuccessful with that last one -- thanks, Snowmaggedon.”
Asked which photographs she likes most, Ms. Lynch, who will be studying in Beijing this fall, said she likes comparing the photograph she took at a Red Sox game on Aug. 18, 2010, David Ortiz Hits a Double at Fenway, with one she took on June 1, 2011, Singing "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway Park.
“I liked the parallel of Red Sox photos from one summer to the next, but aesthetically my favorite photo that they picked is probably a black and white one of my friend doing a yoga pose in Walden Pond,” she said.